THE   OXFORD   MOVEMENT 


THE 

OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

TWELVE    YEARS 

1833-1845 


BY 

R.  W.  CHURCH,  M.A.,  D.C.L., 

SOMETIME   DEAN    OF   ST.    PAUL'S,  AND    FELLOW   OF   ORIEL  COLLEGE,   OXFORD 


MACMILLAN    AND   CO. 

AND    NEW   YORK 


A  II  rights  reserved 


ADVERTISEMENT 

THE  revision  of  these  papers  was  a  task  to  which  the 
late  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  gave  all  the  work  he  could 
during  the  last  months  of  his  life.  At  the  time  of  his 
death,  fourteen  of  the  papers  had,  so  far  as  can  be 
judged,  received  the  form  in  which  he  wished  them  to 
be  published ;  and  these,  of  course,  are  printed  here 
exactly  as  he  left  them.  One  more  he  had  all  but 
prepared  for  publication  ;  the  last  four  were  mainly  in 
the  condition  in  which,  six  years  ago,  he  had  them 
privately  put  into  type,  for  the  convenience  of  his  own 
further  work  upon  them,  and  for  the  reading  of  two  or 
three  intimate  friends.  Those  into  whose  care  his 
work  has  now  come  have  tried,  with  the  help  of  his 
pencilled  notes,  to  bring  these  four  papers  as  nearly  as 
they  can  into  the  form  which  they  believe  he  would 
have  had  them  take.  But  it  has  seemed  better  to 
leave  unaltered  a  sentence  here  and  there  to  which 
he  might  have  given  a  more  perfect  shape,  rather 
than  to  run  the  risk  of  swerving  from  the  thought 
which  was  in  his  mind. 

It  is  possible  that  the  Dean  would  have  made  con- 
siderable changes  in  the  preface  which  is  here  printed ; 
for  only  that  which  seems  the  first  draft  of  it  has  been 
found.  But  even  thus  it  serves  to  show  his  wish  and 

2065274 


AD  VER  TISEMENT 


purpose  for  the  work  he  had  in  hand ;  and  it  has 
therefore  been  thought  best  to  publish  it.  Leave  has 
been  obtained  to  add  here  some  fragments  from  a 
letter  which,  three  years  ago,  he  wrote  to  Lord  Acton 
about  these  papers : 

"  If  I  ever  publish  them,  I  must  say  distinctly  what 
I  want  to  do,  which  is,  not  to  pretend  to  write  a  history 
of  the  movement,  or  to  account  for  it  or  adequately  to 
judge  it  and  put  it  in  its  due  place  in  relation  to  the 
religious  and  philosophical  history  of  the  time,  but 
simply  to  preserve  a  contemporary  memorial  of  what 
seems  to  me  to  have  been  a  true  and  noble  effort  which 
passed  before  my  eyes,  a  short  scene  of  religious 
earnestness  and  aspiration,  with  all  that  was  in  it  of 
self-devotion,  affectionateness,  and  high  and  refined 
and  varied  character,  displayed  under  circumstances 
which  are  scarcely  intelligible  to  men  of  the  present 
time  ;  so  enormous  have  been  the  changes  in  what 
was  assumed  and  acted  upon,  and  thought  practicable 
and  reasonable,  '  fifty  years  since.'  For  their  time  and 
opportunities,  the  men  of  the  movement,  with  all  their 
imperfect  equipment  and  their  mistakes,  still  seem  to 
me  the  salt  of  their  generation.  ...  I  wish  to  leave 
behind  me  a  record  that  one  who  lived  with  them,  and 
lived  long  beyond  most  of  them,  believed  in  the  reality 
of  their  goodness  and  height  of  character,  and  still 
looks  back  with  deepest  reverence  to  those  forgotten 
men  as  the  companions  to  whose  teaching  and  ex- 
ample he  owes  an  infinite  debt,  and  not  he  only,  but 
religious  society  in  England  of  all  kinds." 

January  ^lsft  1891. 


PREFACE 

THE  following  pages  relate  to  that  stage  in  the  Church 
revival  of  this  century  which  is  familiarly  known 
as  the  Oxford  Movement,  or,  to  use  its  nickname, 
the  Tractarian  Movement.  Various  side  influences 
and  conditions  affected  it  at  its  beginning  and  in  its 
course ;  but  the  impelling  and  governing  force  was, 
throughout  the  years  with  which  these  pages  are 
concerned,  at  Oxford.  It  was  naturally  and  justly  asso- 
ciated with  Oxford,  from  which  it  received  some  of 
its  most  marked  characteristics.  Oxford  men  started 
it  and  guided  it.  At  Oxford  were  raised  its  first 
hopes,  and  Oxford  was  the  scene  of  its  first  suc- 
cesses. At  Oxford  were  its  deep  disappointments,  and 
its  apparently  fatal  defeat.  And  it  won  and  lost,  as  a 
champion  of  English  theology  and  religion,  a  man  of 
genius,  whose  name  is  among  the  illustrious  names  of 
his  age,  a  name  which  will  always  be  connected  with 
modern  Oxford,  and  is  likely  to  be  long  remembered 
wherever  the  English  language  is  studied. 

We    are    sometimes   told    that    enough    has   been 
written  about    the   Oxford   Movement,   and   that  the 


viii  PREFACE 

world  is  rather  tired  of  the  subject.  A  good  deal  has 
certainly  been  both  said  and  written  about  it,  and 
more  is  probably  still  to  come ;  and  it  is  true  that 
other  interests,  more  immediate  or  more  attractive, 
have  thrown  into  the  background  what  is  severed 
from  us  by  the  interval  of  half  a  century.  Still  that 
movement  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  what  is  going 
on  in  everyday  life  among  us  now ;  and  feelings  both 
of  hostility  to  it,  and  of  sympathy  with  it,  are  still 
lively  and  keen  among  those  to  whom  religion  is  a 
serious  subject,  and  even  among  some  who  are  neutral 
in  the  questions  which  it  raised,  but  who  find  in  it 
a  study  of  thought  and  character.  I  myself  doubt 
whether  the  interest  of  it  is  so  exhausted  as  is  some- 
times assumed.  If  it  is,  these  pages  will  soon  find 
their  appropriate  resting-place.  But  I  venture  to 
present  them,  because,  though  a  good  many  judgments 
upon  the  movement  have  been  put  forth,  they  have 
come  mostly  from  those  who  have  been  more  or  less 
avowedly  opposed  to  it.1  The  men  of  most  account 
among  those  who  were  attracted  by  it  and  represented 
it  have,  with  one  illustrious  exception,  passed  away. 
A  survivor  of  the  generation  which  it  stirred  so  deeply 
may  not  have  much  that  is  new  to  tell  about  it.  He 
may  not  be  able  to  affect  much  the  judgment  which 
will  finally  be  accepted  about  it.  But  the  fact  is  not 
unimportant,  that  a  number  of  able  and  earnest  men, 
men  who  both  intellectually  and  morally  would  have 
been  counted  at  the  moment  as  part  of  the  promise 

1  It  is  hardly  necessary   to  say   that   these  and   the   following   words   were 
written  before  Dr.  Newman's  death,  and  the  publication  of  his  letters. 


PREFACE  ix 

of  the  coming  time,  were  fascinated  and  absorbed  by 
it.  It  turned  and  governed  their  lives,  lifting  them 
out  of  custom  and  convention  to  efforts  after  some- 
thing higher,  something  worthier  of  what  they  were. 
It  seemed  worth  while  to  exhibit  the  course  of  the 
movement  as  it  looked  to  these  men — as  it  seemed 
to  them  viewed  from  the  inside.  My  excuse  for 
adding  to  so  much  that  has  been  already  written  is, 
that  I  was  familiar  with  many  of  the  chief  actors  in 
the  movement.  And  I  do  not  like  that  the  re- 
membrance of  friends  and  associates,  men  of  singular 
purity  of  life  and  purpose,  who  raised  the  tone  of 
living  round  them,  and  by  their  example,  if  not  by 
their  ideas,  recalled  both  Oxford  and  the  Church  to  a 
truer  sense  of  their  responsibilities,  should,  because  no 
one  would  take  the  trouble  to  put  things  on  record, 
"pass  away  like  a  dream." 

The  following  pages  were,  for  the  most  part, 
written,  and  put  into  printed  shape,  in  1884  and  1885. 
Since  they  were  written,  books  have  appeared,  some 
of  them  important  ones,  going  over  most  of  the  same 
ground ;  while  yet  more  volumes  may  be  expected. 
We  have  had  ingenious  theories  of  the  genesis  of  the 
movement,  and  the  filiation  of  its  ideas.  Attempts 
have  been  made  to  alter  the  proportions  of  the  scene 
and  of  the  several  parts  played  upon  it,  and  to  reduce 
the  common  estimate  of  the  weight  and  influence  of 
some  of  the  most  prominent  personages.  The  point 
of  view  of  those  who  have  thus  written  is  not  mine, 
and  they  tell  their  story  (with  a  full  right  so  to  do)  as 
I  tell  mine.  But  I  do  not  purpose  to  compare  and 


x  PREFACE 

adjust  our  respective  accounts — to  attack  theirs,  or 
to  defend  my  own.  I  have  not  gone  through  their 
books  to  find  statements  to  except  to,  or  to  qualify. 
The  task  would  be  a  tiresome  and  unprofitable  one. 
I  understand  their  point  of  view,  though  I  do  not 
accept  it.  I  do  not  doubt  their  good  faith,  and  I 
hope  that  they  will  allow  mine. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   I 


PAGE 

THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DAYS  i 


CHAPTER    II 

THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  MOVEMENT — JOHN  KEBLE  .         20 

CHAPTER   III 

RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  .  ...         30 

CHAPTER    IV 

MR.  NEWMAN'S  EARLY  FRIENDS — ISAAC  WILLIAMS.  .         57 

CHAPTER   V 

CHARLES  MARRIOTT  .  .  .  .  70 

CHAPTER    VI 
THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  .  .  .  .  .82 

CHAPTER    VII 
THE  TRACTARIANS  in 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   VIII 

PAGE 

SUBSCRIPTION    AT    MATRICULATION    AND    ADMISSION    OF 

DISSENTERS    .  .  .  .  .  .127 

CHAPTER   IX 

DR.  HAMPDEN  .  .  .  .  .  .139 

CHAPTER   X 

GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT,  1835-1840  .  155 

CHAPTER   XI 
THE  ROMAN  QUESTION          .  .  .  .  .175 

CHAPTER   XII 

CHANGES        .  .  .  .  .  .  .190 

CHAPTER   XIII 

THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT       .  .  .212 

CHAPTER    XIV 

No.  90  .......        232 

CHAPTER   XV 
AFTER  No.  90  .  .  .  .  .  .257 

CHAPTER   XVI 

THE  THREE  DEFEATS:  ISAAC  WILLIAMS,  MACMULLEN,  PUSEY       271 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    XVII 

PAGE 

W.  G.  WARD  ......       292 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  .  .  .312 

CHAPTER    XIX 

THE  CATASTROPHE     .  .  .  .  .       333 


CHAPTER   I 

THE    CHURCH    IN    THE    REFORM    DAYS 

WHAT  is  called  the  Oxford  or  Tractarian  movement 
began,  without  doubt,  in  a  vigorous  effort  for  the 
immediate  defence  of  the  Church  against  serious 
dangers,  arising  from  the  violent  and  threatening 
temper  of  the  days  of  the  Reform  Bill.  It  was  one 
of  several  and  widely  differing  efforts.  Viewed  super- 
ficially it  had  its  origin  in  the  accident  of  an  urgent 
necessity.1  The  Church  was  really  at  the  moment 
imperilled  amid  the  crude  revolutionary  projects  of  the 
Reform  epoch ; 2  and  something  bolder  and  more 
effective  than  the  ordinary  apologies  for  the  Church 

1  The     suppression    of    the    Irish  Copleston,  July  1832.     Life,   i.    167). 

bishoprics.      Palmer,  Narrative  (1883),  "If  such  an  arrangement  of  the  Ex- 

pp.  44,  101.     Maurice,  Life,  i.  180.  ecutive    Government    is    completed,  it 

2  "The  Church,  as  it  now  stands,  no  will  be  a  difficult,  but  great  and  glori- 

human    power    can  save"  (Arnold    to  ous   feat  for  your  Lordship's  ministry 

Tyler,     June      1832,    Life,    i.     326).  to    preserve    the    establishment    from 

' '  Nothing,    as    it    seems    to   me,    can  utter    overthrow "    ( Whately   to    Lord 

save  the  Church  but  an  union  with  the  Grey,  May  1832.     Life,  i.  156).     It  is 

Dissenters  ;  now  they  are  leagued  with  remarkable  that  Dean  Stanley  should 

the  antichristian  party,  and  no  merely  have   been   satisfied  with   ascribing  to 

internal    reforms    will    satisfy    them"  the     movement    an     "origin    entirely 

(Arnold  to  Whately,  January  1833,  i.  political,'1''    and    should    have    seen    a 

348).      He  afterwards  thought  this  ex-  proof    of    this     "thoroughly    political 

aggerated  (Life,  i.  336).     "  The  Church  origin  "    in    Newman's    observing    the 

has  been  for  one  hundred  years  without  date  of  Mr.  Keble's  sermon  "National 

any  government,  and  in  such  a  stormy  Apostasy  "    as    the    birthday    of    the 

season  it  will  not  go  on  much  longer  movement.     Edin.    Rev.   April    1880, 

without    a  rudder"    (Whately  to    Bp.  pp.  309,  310. 

B 


2  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

was  the  call  of  the  hour.  The  official  leaders  of  the 
Church  were  almost  stunned  and  bewildered  by  the 
fierce  outbreak  of  popular  hostility.  The  answers  put 
forth  on  its  behalf  to  the  clamour  for  extensive  and 
even  destructive  change  were  the  work  of  men  sur- 
prised in  a  moment  of  security.  They  scarcely  recog- 
nised the  difference  between  what  was  indefensible 
and  what  must  be  fought  for  to  the  death ;  they 
mistook  subordinate  or  unimportant  points  for  the 
key  of  their  position :  in  their  compromises  or  in  their 
resistance  they  wanted  the  guidance  of  clear  and 
adequate  principles,  and  they  were  vacillating  and 
ineffective.  But  stronger  and  far-seeing  minds  per- 
ceived the  need  of  a  broad  and  intelligible  basis  on 
which  to  maintain  the  cause  of  the  Church.  For  the 
air  was  full  of  new  ideas ;  the  temper  of  the  time  was 
bold  and  enterprising.  It  was  felt  by  men  who  looked 
forward,  that  to  hold  their  own  they  must  have  some- 
thing more  to  show  than  custom  or  alleged  expediency 
—they  must  sound  the  depths  of  their  own  convictions, 
and  not  be  afraid  to  assert  the  claims  of  these  con- 
victions on  men's  reason  and  imagination  as  well  as  on 
their  associations  and  feelings.  The  same  dangers  and 
necessities  acted  differently  on  different  minds ;  but 
among  those  who  were  awakened  by  them  to  the 
presence  of  a  great  crisis  were  the  first  movers  in 
what  came  to  be  known  as  the  Tractarian  movement. 
The  stir  around  them,  the  perils  which  seemed  to 
threaten,  were  a  call  to  them  to  examine  afresh  the 
meaning  of  their  familiar  words  and  professions. 

For  the  Church,  as  it  had  been  in  the  quiet  days 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  scarcely  adapted  to 
the  needs  of  more  stirring  times.  The  idea  of  clerical 
life  had  certainly  sunk,  both  in  fact  and  in  the  popular 


i        THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DA  YS        3 

estimate  of  it.  The  disproportion  between  the  pur- 
poses for  which  the  Church  with  its  ministry  was 
founded  and  the  actual  tone  of  feeling  among  those 
responsible  for  its  service  had  become  too  great. 
Men  were  afraid  of  principles ;  the  one  thing  they 
most  shrank  from  was  the  suspicion  of  enthusiasm. 
Bishop  Lavington  wrote  a  book  to.  hold  up  to  scorn 
the  enthusiasm  of  Methodists  and  Papists ;  and  what 
would  have  seemed  reasonable  and  natural  in  matters 
of  religion  and  worship  in  the  age  of  Cranmer,  in  the 
age  of  Hooker,  in  the  age  of  Andrewes,  or  in  the 
age  of  Ken,  seemed  extravagant  in  the  age  which 
reflected  the  spirit  of  Tillotson  and  Seeker,  and  even 
Porteus.  The  typical  clergyman  in  English  pictures 
of  the  manners  of  the  day,  in  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield, 
in  Miss  Austen's  novels,  in  Crabbe's  Parish  Register, 
is  represented,  often  quite  unsuspiciously,  as  a  kindly 
and  respectable  person,  but  certainly  not  alive  to  the 
greatness  of  his  calling.  He  was  often  much,  very 
much,  to  the  society  round  him.  When  communica- 
tion was  so  difficult  and  infrequent,  he  filled  a  place  in 
the  country  life  of  England  which  no  one  else  could 
fill.  He  was  often  the  patriarch  of  his  parish,  its  ruler, 
its  doctor,  its  lawyer,  its  magistrate,  as  well  as  its 
teacher,  before  whom  vice  trembled  and  rebellion 
dared  not  show  itself.  The  idea  of  the  priest  was  not 
quite  forgotten ;  but  there  was  much — much  even  of 
what  was  good  and  useful  —  to  obscure  it.  The 
beauty  of  the  English  Church  in  this  time  was  its 
family  life  of  purity  and  simplicity ;  its  blot  was  quiet 
worldliness.  It  has  sometimes  been  the  fashion  in 
later  days  of  strife  and  disquiet  to  regret  that  un- 
pretending estimate  of  clerical  duty  and  those  easy- 
going days  ;  as  it  has  sometimes  been  the  fashion  to 


THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 


regret  the  pomp  and  dignity  with  which  well-born 
or  scholarly  bishops,  furnished  with  ample  leisure 
and  splendid  revenues,  presided  in  unapproachable 
state  over  their  clergy  and  held  their  own  among 
the  great  county  families.  Most  things  have  a  side 
for  which  something  can  be  said  ;  and  we  may  truth- 
fully and  thankfully  recall  that  among  the  clergy  of 
those  days  there  were  not  a  few  but  many  instances, 
not  only  of  gentle  manners,  and  warm  benevolence, 
and  cultivated  intelligence,  but  of  simple  piety  and 
holy  life.1  But  the  fortunes  of  the  Church  are  not 
safe  in  the  hands  of  a  clergy,  of  which  a  great  part 
take  their  obligations  easily.  It  was  slumbering  and 
sleeping  when  the  visitation  of  days  of  change  and 
trouble  came  upon  it. 

Against  this  state  of  things  the  Oxford  movement 
was  a  determined  revolt ;  but,  as  has  been  said,  it  was 
not  the  only  one,  nor  the  first.  A  profound  discontent 
at  the  state  of  religion  in  England  had  taken  pos- 
session of  many  powerful  and  serious  minds  in  the 
generation  which  was  rising  into  manhood  at  the  close 
of  the  first  quarter  of  the  century  ;  and  others  besides 
the  leaders  of  the  movement  were  feeling  their  way 
to  firmer  ground.  Other  writers  of  very  different 
principles,  and  with  different  objects,  had  become  alive, 
among  other  things,  to  the  importance  of  true  ideas 
about  the  Church,  impatient  at  the  ignorance  and 
shallowness  of  the  current  views  of  it,  and  alarmed  at 
the  dangers  which  menaced  it.  Two  Oxford  teachers 
who  commanded  much  attention  by  their  force  and 
boldness — Dr.  Whately  and  Dr.  Arnold — had  de- 
veloped their  theories  about  the  nature,  constitution,' 

1  Readers   of  Wordsworth   will   remember   the   account   of   Mr.    R.    Walker 
(Notes  to  the  "River  Duddon"). 


i        THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DA  YS        5 

and  functions  of  the  Church.  They  were  dissatisfied 
with  the  general  stagnation  of  religious  opinion,  on 
this  as  on  other  subjects.  They  agreed  in  resenting 
the  unintelligent  shortsightedness  which  relegated  such 
a  matter  to  a  third  or  fourth  rank  in  the  scale  of 
religious  teaching.  They  agreed  also  in  seizing  the 
spiritual  aspect  of  the  Church,  and  in  raising  the  idea 
of  it  above  the  level  of  the  poor  and  worldly  con- 
ceptions on  the  assumption  of  which  questions  relating 
to  it  were  popularly  discussed.  But  in  their  funda- 
mental principles  they  were  far  apart.  I  assume,  on 
the  authority  of  Cardinal  Newman,  what  was  widely 
believed  in  Oxford,  and  never  apparently  denied,  that 
the  volume  entitled  Letters  of  an  Episcopalian?  1826, 
was,  in  some  sense  at  least,  the  work  of  Dr.  Whately. 
In  it  is  sketched  forth  the  conception  of  an  organised 
body,  introduced  into  the  world  by  Christ  Himself, 
endowed  with  definite  spiritual  powers  and  with  no 
other,  and,  whether  connected  with  the  State  or  not, 
having  an  independent  existence  and  inalienable 
claims,  with  its  own  objects  and  laws,  with  its  own 
moral  standard  and  spirit  and  character.  From  this 
book  Cardinal  Newman  tells  us  that  he  learnt  his 
theory  of  the  Church,  though  it  was,  after  all,  but 
the  theory  received  from  the  first  appearance  of 
Christian  history ;  and  he  records  also  the  deep 
impression  which  it  made  on  others.  Dr.  Arnold's 
view  was  a  much  simpler  one.  He  divided  the  world 
into  Christians  and  non-Christians  :  Christians  were 
all  who  professed  to  believe  in  Christ  as  a  Divine 
Person  and  to  worship  Him,2  and  the  brotherhood, 
the  "Societas"  of  Christians,  was  all  that  was  meant 

1  Compare  Life  of 'Whately  (ed.  1866),  2  Arnold  to  W.  Smith,  Life,  i.  356- 

i.  52,  68.  358  ;  ii.  32. 


THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 


by  "the  Church"  in  the  New  Testament.  It  mat- 
tered, of  course,  to  the  conscience  of  each  Christian 
what  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  believe,  but  to 
no  one  else.  Church  organisation  was,  according  to 
circumstances,  partly  inevitable  or  expedient,  partly 
mischievous,  but  in  no  case  of  divine  authority. 
Teaching,  ministering  the  word,  was  a  thing  of  divine 
appointment,  but  not  so  the  mode  of  exercising  it, 
either  as  to  persons,  forms,  or  methods.  Sacraments 
there  were,  signs  and  pledges  of  divine  love  and  help, 
in  every  action  of  life,  in  every  sight  of  nature,  and 
eminently  two  most  touching  ones,  recommended  to 
Christians  by  the  Redeemer  Himself;  but  except  as  a 
matter  of  mere  order,  one  man  might  deal  with  these 
as  lawfully  as  another.  Church  history  there  was, 
fruitful  in  interest,  instruction,  and  warning ;  for  it  was 
the  record  of  the  long  struggle  of  the  true  idea  of  the 
Church  against  the  false,  and  of  the  fatal  disappear- 
ance of  the  true  before  the  forces  of  blindness  and 
wickedness.1  Dr.  Arnold's  was  a  passionate  attempt 
to  place  the  true  idea  in  the  light.  Of  the  difficulties 
of  his  theory  he  made  light  account.  There  was  the 
vivid  central  truth  which  glowed  through  his  soul  and 
quickened  all  his  thoughts.  He  became  its  champion 
and  militant  apostle.  These  doctrines,  combined  with 
his  strong  political  liberalism,  made  the  Midlands  not 
for  Dr.  Arnold.  But  he  liked  the  fighting,  as  he 
thought,  against  the  narrow  and  frightened  orthodoxy 
round  him.  And  he  was  in  the  thick  of  this  fight- 
ing when  another  set  of  ideas  about  the  Church— 
the  ideas  on  which  alone  it  seemed  to  a  number  of 
earnest  and  anxious  minds  that  the  cause  of  the 
Church  could  be  maintained — the  ideas  which  were 

1   Life,  \.  225  sqq. 


i        THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DA  YS        7 

the  beginning  of  the  Oxford  movement,  crossed  his 
path.  It  was  the  old  orthodox  tradition  of  the  Church, 
with  fresh  life  put  into  it,  which  he  flattered  himself 
that  he  had  so  triumphantly  demolished.  This  in- 
trusion of  a  despised  rival  to  his  own  teaching  about 
the  Church  —  teaching  in  which  he  believed  with  deep 
and  fervent  conviction  —  profoundly  irritated  him  ;  all 
the  more  that  it  came  from  men  who  had  been  among 
his  friends,  and  who,  he  thought,  should  have  known 
better.1 

But  neither  Dr.  Whately's  nor  Dr.  Arnold's  at- 
tempts to  put  the  old  subject  of  the  Church  in  a  new 
light  gained  much  hold  on  the  public  mind.  One  was 
too  abstract  ;  the  other  too  unhistorical  and  revolu- 
tionary. Both  in  Oxford  and  in  the  country  were  men 
whose  hearts  burned  within  them  for  something  less 
speculative  and  vague,  something  more  reverent  and 
less  individual,  more  in  sympathy  with  the  inherited 
spirit  of  the  Church.  It  did  not  need  much  searching 
to  find  in  the  facts  and  history  of  the  Church  ample 
evidence  of  principles  distinct  and  inspiring,  which 
however  long  latent,  or  overlaid  by  superficial  accre- 
tions, were  as  well  fitted  as  they  ever  were  to  animate 
its  defenders  in  the  struggle  with  the  unfriendly  opinion 
of  the  day.  They  could  not  open  their  Prayer  Books, 
and  think  of  what  they  read  there,  without  seeing  that 
on  the  face  of  it  the  Church  claimed  to  be  something 
very  different  from  what  it  was  assumed  to  be  in  the 
current  controversies  of  the  time,  very  different  from  a 
mere  institution  of  the  State,  from  a  vague  collection  of 
Christian  professions,  from  one  form  or  denomination  of 
religion  among  many,  distinguished  by  larger  privileges 


1   "I   am   vexed  to  find  how  much      ^KKSTO.    ^XP7?  "    (Arnold    to    Whately, 
hopeless  bigotiy  lingers   in  minds,   oh      Sept.  1832.     Life,  i.  331  ;  ii.  3-7). 


8  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

and  larger  revenues.  They  could  not  help  seeing  that 
it  claimed  an  origin  not  short  of  the  Apostles  of  Christ, 
and  took  for  granted  that  it  was  to  speak  and  teach 
with  their  authority  and  that  of  their  Master.  These 
were  theological  commonplaces  ;  but  now,  the  pressure 
of  events  and  of  competing  ideas  made  them  to  be  felt 
as  real  and  momentous  truths.  Amid  the  confusions 
and  inconsistencies  of  the  semi -political  controversy 
on  Church  reform,  and  on  the  defects  and  rights  of  the 
Church,  which  was  going  on  in  Parliament,  in  the 
press,  and  in  pamphlets,  the  deeper  thoughts  of  those 
who  were  interested  in  its  fortunes  were  turned  to 
what  was  intrinsic  and  characteristic  in  its  constitution  : 
and  while  these  thoughts  in  some  instances  only  issued 
in  theory  and  argument,  in  others  they  led  to  practical 
resolves  to  act  upon  them  and  enforce  them. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  century,  say 
about  1825-30,  two  characteristic  forms  of  Church  of 
England  Christianity  were  popularly  recognised.  One 
inherited  the  traditions  of  a  learned  and  sober  Angli- 
canism, claiming  as  the  authorities  for  its  theology  the 
great  line  of  English  divines  from  Hooker  to  Water- 
land,  finding  its  patterns  of  devotion  in  Bishop  Wilson, 
Bishop  Home,  and  the  "  Whole  Duty  of  Man,"  but 
not  forgetful  of  Andrewes,  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  Ken,— 
preaching,  without  passion  or  excitement,  scholarlike, 
careful,  wise,  often  vigorously  reasoned  discourses  on 
the  capital  points  of  faith  and  morals,  and  exhibiting  in 
its  adherents,  who  were  many  and  important,  all  the 
varieties  of  a  great  and  far-descended  school,  which 
claimed  for  itself  rightful  possession  of  the  ground 
which  it  held.  There  was  nothing  effeminate  about 
it,  as  there  was  nothing  fanatical  ;  there  was  nothing 
extreme  or  foolish  about  it ;  it  was  a  manly  school, 


i  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DA  YS  9 

distrustful  of  high -wrought  feelings  and  professions, 
cultivating  self-command  and  shy  of  display,  and  set- 
ting up  as  its  mark,  in  contrast  to  what  seemed  to  it 
sentimental  weakness,  a  reasonable  and  serious  idea 
of  duty.  The  divinity  which  it  propounded,  though  it 
rested  on  learning,  was  rather  that  of  strong  common 
sense  than  of  the  schools  of  erudition.  Its  better 
members  were  highly  cultivated,  benevolent  men, 
intolerant  of  irregularities  both  of  doctrine  and  life, 
whose  lives  were  governed  by  an  unostentatious  but 
solid  and  unfaltering  piety,  ready  to  burst  forth  on 
occasion  into  fervid  devotion.  Its  worse  members 
were  jobbers  and  hunters  after  preferment,  pluralists 
who  built  fortunes  and  endowed  families  out  of  the 
Church,  or  country  gentlemen  in  orders,  who  rode  to 
hounds  and  shot  and  danced  and  farmed,  and  often 
did  worse  things.  Its  average  was  what  naturally  in 
England  would  be  the  average,  in  a  state  of  things  in 
which  great  religious  institutions  have  been  for  a  long 
time  settled  and  unmolested — kindly,  helpful,  respect- 
able, sociable  persons  of  good  sense  and  character, 
workers  rather  in  a  fashion  of  routine  which  no  one 
thought  of  breaking,  sometimes  keeping  up  their 
University  learning,  and  apt  to  employ  it  in  odd  and 
not  very  profitable  inquiries ;  apt,  too,  to  value  them- 
selves on  their  cheerfulness  and  quick  wit ;  but  often 
dull  and  dogmatic  and  quarrelsome,  often  insufferably 
pompous.  The  custom  of  daily  service  and  even  of 
fasting  was  kept  up  more  widely  than  is  commonly 
supposed.  The  Eucharist,  though  sparingly  admin- 
istered, and  though  it  had  been  profaned  by  the 
operation  of  the  Test  Acts,  was  approached  by  reli- 
gious people  with  deep  reverence.  But  besides  the 
better,  and  the  worse,  and  the  average  members  of 


io  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

this,  which  called  itself  the  Church  party,  there  stood 
out  a  number  of  men  of  active  and  original  minds, 
who,  starting  from  the  traditions  of  the  party,  were  in 
advance  of  it  in  thought  and  knowledge,  or  in  the 
desire  to  carry  principles  into  action.  At  the  Univer- 
sities learning  was  still  represented  by  distinguished 
names.  At  Oxford,  Dr.  Routh  was  still  living  and  at 
work,  and  Van  Mildert  was  not  forgotten.  Bishop 
Lloyd,  if  he  had  lived,  would  have  played  a  consider- 
able part ;  and  a  young  man  of  vast  industry  and  great 
Oriental  learning,  Mr.  Pusey,  was  coming  on  the  scene. 
Davison,  in  an  age  which  had  gone  mad  about  the 
study  of  prophecy,  had  taught  a  more  intelligent  and 
sober  way  of  regarding  it ;  and  Mr.  John  Miller's 
Bampton  Lectures,  now  probably  only  remembered  by 
a  striking  sentence,  quoted  in  a  note  to  the  Christian 
Year,1  had  impressed  his  readers  with  a  deeper  sense 
of  the  uses  of  Scripture.  Cambridge,  besides  scholars 
like  Bishop  Kaye,  and  accomplished  writers  like  Mr. 
Le  Bas  and  Mr.  Lyall,  could  boast  of  Mr.  Hugh 
James  Rose,  the  most  eminent  person  of  his  genera- 
tion as  a  divine.  But  the  influence  of  this  learned 
theology  was  at  the  time  not  equal  to  its  value. 
Sound  requires  atmosphere  ;  and  there  was  as  yet  no 
atmosphere  in  the  public  mind  in  which  the  voice  of 
this  theology  could  be  heard.  The  person  who  first 
gave  body  and  force  to  Church  theology,  not  to  be 
mistaken  or  ignored,  was  Dr.  Hook.  His  massive  and 
thorough  Churchmanship  was  the  independent  growth 
of  his  own  thoughts  and  reading.  Resolute,  through 
good  report  and  evil  report,  rough  but  very  generous, 
stern  both  against  Popery  and  Puritanism,  he  had 
become  a  power  in  the  Midlands  and  the  North,  and 

1  St.  Bartholomew's  Day. 


i  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DAYS  1 1 

first  Coventry,  then  Leeds,  were  the  centres  of  a  new 
influence.  He  was  the  apostle  of  the  Church  to  the 
great  middle  class. 

These  were  the  orthodox  Churchmen,  whom  their 
rivals,  and  not  their  rivals  only,1  denounced  as  dry,  un- 
spiritual,  formal,  unevangelical,  self-righteous  ;  teachers 
of  mere  morality  at  their  best,  allies  and  servants  of 
the  world  at  their  worst.  In  the  party  which  at  this 
time  had  come  to  be  looked  upon  popularly  as  best 
entitled  to  be  the  religions  party,  whether  they  were 
admired  as  Evangelicals,  or  abused  as  Calvinists,  or 
laughed  at  as  the  Saints,  were  inheritors  not  of  Angli- 
can traditions,  but  of  those  which  had  grown  up  among 
the  zealous  clergymen  and  laymen  who  had  sympa- 
thised with  the  great  Methodist  revival,  and  whose 
theology  and  life  had  been  profoundly  affected  by  it. 
It  was  the  second  or  third  generation  of  those  whose 
religious  ideas  had  been  formed  and  governed  by  the 
influence  of  teachers  like  Hervey,  Romaine,  Cecil,  Venn, 
Fletcher,  Newton,  and  Thomas  Scott.  The  fathers  of 
the  Evangelical  school  were  men  of  naturally  strong 
and  vigorous  understandings,  robust  and  rugged,  and 
sometimes  eccentric,  but  quite  able  to  cope  with  the 
controversialists,  like  Bishop  Tomline,  who  attacked 
them.  These  High  Church  controversialists  were  too 
half-hearted  and  too  shallow,  and  understood  their  own 
principles  too  imperfectly,  to  be  a  match  for  antagonists 
who  were  in  deadly  earnest,  and  put  them  to  shame  by 
their  zeal  and  courage.  But  Newton  and  Romaine 
and  the  Milners  were  too  limited  and  narrow  in  their 
compass  of  ideas  to  found  a  powerful  theology.  They 

1  "The    mere     barren     orthodoxy  speaks    of  his     "high    endeavours    to 

which,    from    all    that    I   can    hear,  is  rouse  Oxford  from  its  lethargy  having 

characteristic  of  Oxford."     Maurice  in  so  signally  failed  "  (i.  143). 
1829    (Life,    i.    103).       In     1832    he 


12  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

undoubtedly  often  quickened  conscience.  But  their 
system  was  a  one-sided  and  unnatural  one,  indeed  in  the 
hands  of  some  of  its  expounders  threatening  morality 
and  soundness  of  character.1  It  had  none  of  the  sweep 
which  carried  the  justification  doctrines  of  Luther,  or 
the  systematic  predestinarianism  of  Calvin,  or  the 
"  platform  of  discipline"  of  John  Knox  and  the  Puritans. 
It  had  to  deal  with  a  society  which  laid  stress  on 
what  was  "reasonable,"  or  "polite," or  "ingenious,"  or 
"genteel,"  and  unconsciously  it  had  come  to  have 
respect  to  these  requirements.  The  one  thing  by 
which  its  preachers  carried  disciples  with  them  was 
their  undoubted  and  serious  piety,  and  their  brave, 
though  often  fantastic  and  inconsistent,  protest  against 
the  world.  They  won  consideration  and  belief  by  the 
mild  persecution  which  this  protest  brought  on  them — 
by  being  proscribed  as  enthusiasts  by  comfortable 
dignitaries,  and  mocked  as  "  Methodists  "  and  "  Saints" 
by  wits  and  worldlings.  But  the  austere  spirit  of 
Newton  and  Thomas  Scott  had,  between  1820  and  1830, 
given  way  a  good  deal  to  the  influence  of  increasing 
popularity.  The  profession  of  Evangelical  religion 
had  been  made  more  than  respectable  by  the  adhesion 
of  men  of  position  and  weight.  Preached  in  the  pulpits 
of  fashionable  chapels,  this  religion  proved  to  be  no 
more  exacting  than  its  "High  and  Dry"  rival.  It 
gave  a  gentle  stimulus  to  tempers  which  required  to 
be  excited  by  novelty.  It  recommended  itself  by  gifts 
of  flowing  words  or  high-pitched  rhetoric  to  those  who 
expected  some  demands  to  be  made  on  them,  so  that 
these  demands  were  not  too  strict.  Yet  Evangelical 
religion  had  not  been  unfruitful,  especially  in  public 

1  Abbey  and   Overton,  English  Church  in  the  Eighteenth   Century,  ii.  1 80, 
204. 


i  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DAYS  13 

results.  It  had  led  Howard  and  Elizabeth  Fry  to 
assail  the  brutalities  of  the  prisons.  It  had  led  Clark- 
son  and  Wilberforce  to  overthrow  the  slave  trade,  and 
ultimately  slavery  itself.  It  had  created  great  Mission- 
ary Societies.  It  had  given  motive  and  impetus  to 
countless  philanthropic  schemes.  What  it  failed  in 
was  the  education  and  development  of  character ;  and 
this  wras  the  result  of  the  increasing  meagreness  of  its 
writing  and  preaching.  There  were  still  Evangelical 
preachers  of  force  and  eloquence — Robert  Hall, 
Edward  Irving,  Chalmers,  Jay  of  Bath — but  they 
were  not  churchmen.  The  circle  of  themes  dwelt  on 
by  this  school  in  the  Church  was  a  contracted  one, 
and  no  one  had  found  the  way  of  enlarging  it.  It 
shrank,  in  its  fear  of  mere  moralising,  in  its  horror  of 
the  idea  of  merit  or  of  the  value  of  good  works,  from 
coming  into  contact  with  the  manifold  realities  of  the 
spirit  of  man :  it  never  seemed  to  get  beyond  the 
"first  beginnings"  of  Christian  teaching,  the  call  to 
repent,  the  assurance  of  forgiveness  :  it  had  nothing  to 
say  to  the  long  and  varied  process  of  building  up  the 
new  life  of  truth  and  goodness  :  it  was  nervously  afraid 
of  departing  from  the  consecrated  phrases  of  its  school, 
and  in  the  perpetual  iteration  of  them  it  lost  hold 
of  the  meaning  they  may  once  have  had.  It  too 
often  found  its  guarantee  for  faithfulness  in  jealous 
suspicions,  and  in  fierce  bigotries,  and  at  length  it 
presented  all  the  characteristics  of  an  exhausted  teach- 
ing and  a  spent  enthusiasm.  Claiming  to  be  exclu- 
sively spiritual,  fervent,  unworldly,  the  sole  announcer 
of  the  free  grace  of  God  amid  self-righteousness  and 
sin,  it  had  come,  in  fact,  to  be  on  very  easy  terms  with 
the  world.  Yet  it  kept  its  hold  on  numbers  of  spirit- 
ually minded  persons,  for  in  truth  there  seemed  to  be 


14  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

nothing  better  for  those  who  saw  in  the  affections  the 
main  field  of  religion.  But  even  of  these  good  men, 
the  monotonous  language  sounded  to  all  but  them- 
selves inconceivably  hollow  and  wearisome  ;  and  in 
the  hands  of  the  average  teachers  of  the  school,  the 
idea  of  religion  was  becoming  poor  and  thin  and 
unreal. 

But  besides  these  two  great  parties,  each  of  them 
claiming  to  represent  the  authentic  and  unchanging 
mind  of  the  Church,  there  were  independent  thinkers 
who  took  their  place  with  neither  and  criticised  both. 
Paley  had  still  his  disciples  at  Cambridge,  or  if  not 
disciples,  yet  representatives  of  his  masculine  but  not 
very  profound  and  reverent  way  of  thinking  ;  and  a 
critical  school,  represented  by  names  afterwards  famous, 
Connop  Thirlwall  and  Julius  Hare,  strongly  influenced 
by  German  speculation,  both  in  theology  and  history, 
began  to  attract  attention.  And  at  Cambridge  was 
growing,  slowly  and  out  of  sight,  a  mind  and  an  influ- 
ence which  were  to  be  at  once  the  counterpart  and 
the  rival  of  the  Oxford  movement,  its  ally  for  a  short 
moment,  and  then  its  earnest  and  often  bitter  enemy. 
In  spite  of  the  dominant  teaching  identified  with  the 
name  of  Mr.  Simeon,  Frederic  Maurice,  with  John 
Sterling  and  other  members  of  the  Apostles'  Club, 
was  feeling  for  something  truer  and  nobler  than  the 
conventionalities  of  the  religious  world.1  In  Oxford, 
mostly  in  a  different  way,  more  dry,  more  dialectical, 
and,  perhaps  it  may  be  said,  more  sober,  definite,  and 
ambitious  of  clearness,  the  same  spirit  was  at  work. 
There  was  a  certain  drift  towards  Dissent  among  the 
warmer  spirits.  U  nder  the  leading  of  Whately,  questions 
were  asked  about  what  was  supposed  to  be  beyond  dis- 

1    V.  Maurice,  Life,  i.   108-111  ;  Trench's  Letters  ;  Carlyle's  Sterling. 


i  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DAYS  15 

pute  with  both  Churchmen  and  Evangelicals.  Current 
phrases,  the  keynotes  of  many  a  sermon,  were  fear- 
lessly taken  to  pieces.  Men  were  challenged  to 
examine  the  meaning  of  their  words.  They  were 
cautioned  or  ridiculed  as  the  case  might  be,  on  the 
score  of  "confusion  of  thought"  and  "inaccuracy  of 
mind " ;  they  were  convicted  of  great  logical  sins, 
ignoratio  elenchi,  or  undistributed  middle  terms ;  and 
bold  theories  began  to  make  their  appearance  about 
religious  principles  and  teaching,  which  did  not  easily 
accommodate  themselves  to  popular  conceptions.  In 
very  different  ways  and  degrees,  Davison,  Copleston, 
Whately,  Hawkins,  Milman,  and  not  least,  a  brilliant 
naturalised  Spaniard  who  sowed  the  seeds  of  doubt 
around  him,  Blanco  White,  had  broken  through  a 
number  of  accepted  opinions,  and  had  presented  some 
startling  ideas  to  men  who  had  thought  that  all  reli- 
gious questions  lay  between  the  orthodoxy  of  Lambeth 
and  the  orthodoxy  of  Clapham  and  Islington.  And 
thus  the  foundation  was  laid,  at  least,  at  Oxford  of 
what  was  then  called  the  Liberal  School  of  Theology. 
Its  theories  and  paradoxes,  then  commonly  associated 
with  the  "  Noetic "  character  of  one  college,  Oriel, 
were  thought  startling  and  venturesome  when  dis- 
cussed in  steady -going  common-rooms  and  country 
parsonages ;  but  they  were  still  cautious  and  old- 
fashioned  compared  with  what  was  to  come  after 
them.  The  distance  is  indeed  great  between  those 
early  disturbers  of  lecture  -  rooms  and  University 
pulpits,  and  their  successors. 

While  this  was  going  on  within  the  Church,  there 
was  a  great  movement  of  thought  going  on  in  the 
country.  It  was  the  time  when  Bentham's  utilitarianism 
had  at  length  made  its  way  into  prominence  and  im- 


1 6  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

portance.  It  had  gained  a  hold  on  a  number  of 
powerful  minds  in  society  and  political  life.  It  was 
threatening  to  become  the  dominant  and  popular 
philosophy.  It  began,  in  some  ways  beneficially,  to 
affect  and  even  control  legislation.  It  made  desperate 
attempts  to  take  possession  of  the  whole  province  of 
morals.  It  forced  those  who  saw  through  its  mischief, 
who  hated  and  feared  it,  to  seek  a  reason,  and  a  solid 
and  strong  one,  for  the  faith  which  was  in  them  as  to 
the  reality  of  conscience  and  the  mysterious  distinction 
between  right  and  wrong.  And  it  entered  into  a  close 
alliance  with  science,  which  was  beginning  to  assert  its 
claims,  since  then  risen  so  high,  to  a  new  and  unde- 
fined supremacy,  not  only  in  the  general  concerns  of 
the  world,  but  specially  in  education.  It  was  the  day 
of  Holland  House.  It  was  the  time  when  a  Society 
of  which  Lord  Brougham  was  the  soul,  and  which 
comprised  a  great  number  of  important  political  and 
important  scientific  names,  was  definitely  formed  for 
the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge.  Their  labours 
are  hardly  remembered  now  in  the  great  changes  for 
which  they  paved  the  way  ;  but  the  Society  was  the 
means  of  getting  written  and  of  publishing  at  a  cheap 
rate  a  number  of  original  and  excellent  books  on 
science,  biography,  and  history.  It  was  the  time  of 
the  Library  of  Useful  Knowledge,  and  its  companion, 
the  Library  of  Entertaining  Knowledge ;  of  the  Penny 
Magazine,  and  its  Church  rival,  the  Saturday  Magazine, 
of  the  Penny  Cyclopedia,  and  Lardner  s  Cabinet 
Cyclopedia,  and  Murray's  Family  Library :  popular 
series,  which  contained  much  of  the  work  of  the  ablest 
men  of  the  day,  and  which,  though  for  the  most  part 
superseded  now,  were  full  of  interest  then.  Another 
creation  of  this  epoch,  and  an  unmistakable  indication 


i  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DAYS  17 

of  its  tendencies,  was  the  British  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  which  met  for  the  first  time 
at  Oxford  in  June  1832,  not  without  a  good  deal  of 
jealousy  and  misgiving,  partly  unreasonable,  partly  not 
unfounded,  among  men  in  whose  hearts  the  cause  and 
fortunes  of  religion  were  supreme. 

Thus  the  time  was  ripe  for  great  collisions  of  prin- 
ciples and  aims ;  for  the  decomposition  of  elements 
which  had  been  hitherto  united  ;  for  sifting  them  out  of 
their  old  combinations,  and  regrouping  them  according 
to  their  more  natural  affinities.  It  was  a  time  for  the 
formation  and  development  of  unexpected  novelties  in 
teaching  and  practical  effort.  There  was  a  great  his- 
toric Church  party,  imperfectly  conscious  of  its  position 
and  responsibilities  ; l  there  was  an  active  but  declining 
pietistic  school,  resting  on  a  feeble  intellectual  basis 
and  narrow  and  meagre  interpretations  of  Scripture, 
and  strong  only  in  its  circle  of  philanthropic  work ; 
there  was,  confronting  both,  a  rising  body  of  inquisitive 
and,  in  some  ways,  menacing  thought.  To  men  deeply 
interested  in  religion,  the  ground  seemed  confused  and 
treacherous.  There  was  room,  and  there  was  a  call, 
for  new  effort ;  but  to  find  the  resources  for  it,  it  seemed 
necessary  to  cut  down  deep  below  the  level  of  what 
even  good  men  accepted  as  the  adequate  expression  of 
Christianity,  and  its  fit  application  to  the  conditions  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  It  came  to  pass  that  there 
were  men  who  had  the  heart  to  make  this  attempt. 
As  was  said  at  starting,  the  actual  movement  began  in 
the  conviction  that  a  great  and  sudden  danger  to  the 
Church  was  at  hand,  and  that  an  unusual  effort  must 


1  "  In  what  concerns  the  Established  vulgar  policy.  The  old  High  Church 
Church,  the  House  of  Commons  seems  race  is  worn  out."  Alex.  Knox 
to  feel  no  other  principle  than  that  of  (June  1816),  i.  54. 

C 


1 8  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

be  made  to  meet  it.  But  if  the  occasion  was  in  a 
measure  accidental,  there  was  nothing  haphazard  or 
tentative  in  the  line  chosen  to  encounter  the  danger. 
From  the  first  it  was  deliberately  and  distinctly  taken. 
The  choice  of  it  was  the  result  of  convictions  which 
had  been  forming  before  the  occasion  came  which 
called  on  them.  The  religious  ideas  which  governed 
the  minds  of  those  who  led  the  movement  had  been 
traced,  in  outline  at  least,  firmly  and  without  faltering. 
The  movement  had  its  spring  in  the  consciences 
and  character  of  its  leaders.  To  these  men  religion 
really  meant  the  most  awful  and  most  seriously  per- 
sonal thing  on  earth.  It  had  not  only  a  theological 
basis ;  it  had  still  more  deeply  a  moral  one.  What 
that  basis  was  is  shown  in  a  variety  of  indications 
of  ethical  temper  and  habits,  before  the  movement, 
in  those  who  afterwards  directed  it.  The  Christian 
Year  was  published  in  1827,  and  tells  us  distinctly  by 
what  kind  of  standard  Mr.  Keble  moulded  his  judgment 
and  aims.  What  Mr.  Keble's  influence  and  teaching 
did,  in  training  an  apt  pupil  to  deep  and  severe  views 
of  truth  and  duty,  is  to  be  seen  in  the  records  of  pur- 
pose and  self-discipline,  often  so  painful,  but  always  so 
lofty  and  sincere,  of  Mr.  Hurrell  Froude's  journal. 
But  these  indications  are  most  forcibly  given  in  Mr. 
Newman's  earliest  preaching.  As  tutor  at  Oriel,  Mr. 
Newman  had  made  what  efforts  he  could,  sometimes 
disturbing  to  the  authorities,  to  raise  the  standard  of 
conduct  and  feeling  among  his  pupils.  WThen  he  be- 
came a  parish  priest,  his  preaching  took  a  singularly 
practical  and  plain-spoken  character.  The  first  sermon 
of  the  series,  a  typical  sermon,  "  Holiness  necessary  for 
future  Blessedness,"  a  sermon  which  has  made  many 
readers  grave  when  they  laid  it  down,  was  written  in 


i  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  REFORM  DA  YS  19 

1826,  before  he  came  to  St.  Mary's ;  and  as  he  began 
he  continued.  No  sermons,  except  those  which  his 
great  opposite,  Dr.  Arnold,  was  preaching  at  Rugby, 
had  appealed  to  conscience  with  such  directness 
and  force.  A  passionate  and  sustained  earnestness 
after  a  high  moral  rule,  seriously  realised  in  conduct, 
is  the  dominant  character  of  these  sermons.  They 
showed  the  strong  reaction  against  slackness  of  fibre 
in  the  religious  life ;  against  the  poverty,  softness, 
restlessness,  worldliness,  the  blunted  and  impaired 
sense  of  truth,  which  reigned  with  little  check  in  the 
recognised  fashions  of  professing  Christianity ;  the 
want  of  depth  both  of  thought  and  feeling  ;  the  strange 
blindness  to  the  real  sternness,  nay  the  austerity, 
of  the  New  Testament.  Out  of  this  ground  the 
movement  grew.  Even  more  than  a  theological 
reform,  it  was  a  protest  against  the  loose  unreality  of 
ordinary  religious  morality.  In  the  first  stage  of  the 
movement,  moral  earnestness  and  enthusiasm  gave  its 
impulse  to  theological  interest  and  zeal. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE    BEGINNING    OF    THE    MOVEMENT JOHN    KEBLE 

LONG  before  the  Oxford  movement  was  thought  of, 
or  had  any  definite  shape,  a  number  of  its  character- 
istic principles  and  ideas  had  taken  strong  hold  of  the 
mind  of  a  man  of  great  ability  and  great  seriousness, 
who,  after  a  brilliant  career  at  Oxford  as  student  and 
tutor,  had  exchanged  the  University  for  a  humble 
country  cure.  John  Keble,  by  some  years  the  senior, 
but  the  college  friend  and  intimate  of  Arnold,  was  the 
son  of  a  Gloucestershire  country  clergyman  of  strong 
character  and  considerable  scholarship.  He  taught 
and  educated  his  two  sons  at  home,  and  then  sent 
them  to  Oxford,  where  both  of  them  made  their 
mark,  and  the  elder,  John,  a  mere  boy  when  he  first 
appeared  at  his  college,  Corpus,  carried  off  almost  every- 
thing that  the  University  could  give  in  the  way  of 
distinction.  He  won  a  double  first ;  he  won  the  Latin 
and  English  Essays  in  the  same  year ;  and  he  won 
what  was  the  still  greater  honour  of  an  Oriel  Fellow- 
ship. His  honours  were  borne  with  meekness  and 
simplicity  ;  to  his  attainments  he  joined  a  temper  of 
singular  sweetness  and  modesty,  capable  at  the  same 
time,  when  necessary,  of  austere  strength  and  strict- 
ness of  principle.  He  had  become  one  of  the  most 


CHAP,  ii        THE  BEGINNING. OF  THE  MOVEMENT  21 

distinguished  men  in  Oxford,  when  about  the  year 
1823  he  felt  himself  bound  to  give  himself  more  ex- 
clusively to  the  work  of  a  clergyman,  and  left  Oxford 
to  be  his  father's  curate.  There  was  nothing  very 
unusual  in  his  way  of  life,  or  singular  and  showy  in 
his  work  as  a  clergyman  ;  he  went  in  and  out  among 
the  poor,  he  was  not  averse  to  society,  he  preached 
plain,  unpretending,  earnest  sermons  ;  he  kept  up  his 
literary  interests.  But  he  was  a  deeply  convinced 
Churchman,  finding  his  standard  and  pattern  of  doc- 
trine and  devotion  in  the  sober  earnestness  and  dig- 
nity of  the  Prayer  Book,  and  looking  with  great  and 
intelligent  dislike  at  the  teaching  and  practical  working 
of  the  more  popular  system  which,  under  the  name 
of  Evangelical  Christianity,  was  aspiring  to  dominate 
religious  opinion,  and  which,  often  combining  some  of 
the  most  questionable  features  of  Methodism  and  Cal- 
vinism, denounced  with  fierce  intolerance  everything 
that  deviated  from  its  formulas  and  watchwords.  And 
as  his  loyalty  to  the  Church  of  England  was  pro- 
found and  intense,  all  who  had  shared  her  fortunes, 
good  or  bad,  or  who  professed  to  serve  her,  had  a  place 
in  his  affections ;  and  any  policy  which  threatened  to 
injure  or  oppress  her,  and  any  principles  which  were 
hostile  to  her  influence  and  teaching,  roused  his  indig- 
nation and  resistance.  He  was  a  strong  Tory,  and  by 
conviction  and  religious  temper  a  thorough  High 
Churchman. 

But  there  was  nothing  in  him  to  foreshadow  the 
leader  in  a  bold  and  wide-reaching  movement.  He 
was  absolutely  without  ambition.  He  hated  show  and 
mistrusted  excitement.  The  thought  of  preferment  was 
steadily  put  aside  both  from  temper  and  definite  prin- 
ciple. He  had  no  popular  aptitudes,  and  was  very 


22  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

suspicious  of  them.  He  had  no  care  for  the  possession 
of  influence ;  he  had  deliberately  chosen  the  fallentis 
semita  vitce,  and  to  be  what  his  father  had  been,  a 
faithful  and  contented  country  parson,  was  all  that  he 
desired.  But  idleness  was  not  in  his  nature.  Born  a 
poet,  steeped  in  all  that  is  noblest  and  tenderest  and 
most  beautiful  in  Greek  and  Roman  literature,  with 
the  keenest  sympathy  with  that  new  school  of  poetry 
which,  with  Wordsworth  as  its  representative,  was 
searching  out  the  deeper  relations  between  nature  and 
the  human  soul,  he  found  in  poetical  composition  a 
vent  and  relief  for  feelings  stirred  by  the  marvels  of 
glory  and  of  awfulness,  and  by  the  sorrows  and  bless- 
ings, amid  which  human  life  is  passed.  But  his  poetry 
was  for  a  long  time  only  for  himself  and  his  intimate 
friends ;  his  indulgence  in  poetical  composition  was 
partly  playful,  and  it  was  not  till  after  much  hesitation 
on  his  own  part  and  also  on  theirs,  and  with  a  contempt- 
uous undervaluing  of  his  work,  which  continued  to 
the  end  of  his  life,  that  the  anonymous  little  book  of 
poems  was  published  which  has  since  become  familiar 
wherever  English  is  read,  as  the  Christian  Year.  His 
serious  interests  were  public  ones.  Though  living  in 
the  shade,  he  followed  with  anxiety  and  increasing 
disquiet  the  changes  which  went  on  so  rapidly  and  so 
formidably,  during  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of  this 
century,  in  opinion  and  in  the  possession  of  political 
power.  It  became  more  and  more  plain  that  great 
changes  were  at  hand,  though  not  so  plain  what  they 
would  be.  It  seemed  likely  that  power  would  come 
into  the  hands  of  men  and  parties  hostile  to  the  Church 
in  their  principles,  and  ready  to  use  to  its  prejudice  the 
advantages  which  its  position  as  an  establishment  gave 
them  ;  and  the  anticipation  grew  in  Keble's  mind,  that 


ii  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  MO  VEMENT  23 

in  the  struggles  which  seemed  likely,  not  only  for  the 
legal  rights  but  for  the  faith  of  the  Church,  the  Church 
might  have  both  to  claim  more,  and  to  suffer  more,  at 
the  hands  of  Government.  Yet  though  these  thoughts 
filled  his  mind,  and  strong  things  were  said  in  the 
intercourse  with  friends  about  what  was  going  on  about 
them,  no  definite  course  of  action  had  been  even  con- 
templated when  Keble  went  into  the  country  in  1823. 
There  was  nothing  to  distinguish  him  from  numbers 
of  able  clergymen  all  over  England,  who  were  looking 
on  with  interest,  with  anxiety,  often  with  indignation, 
at  what  was  going  on.  Mr.  Keble  had  not  many 
friends  and  was  no  party  chief.  He  was  a  brilliant 
university  scholar  overlaying  the  plain,  unworldly 
country  parson  ;  an  old-fashioned  English  Churchman, 
with  great  veneration  for  the  Church  and  its  bishops, 
and  a  great  dislike  of  Rome,  Dissent,  and  Methodism, 
but  with  a  quick  heart ;  with  a  frank,  gay  humility 
of  soul,  with  great  contempt  of  appearances,  great 
enjoyment  of  nature,  great  unselfishness,  strict  and 
severe  principles  of  morals  and  duty. 

What  was  it  that  turned  him  by  degrees  into  so 
prominent  and  so  influential  a  person  ?  It  was  the 
result  of  the  action  of  his  convictions  and  ideas,  and 
still  more  of  his  character,  on  the  energetic  and  fear- 
less mind  of  a  pupil  and  disciple,  Richard  Hurrell 
Froude.  Froude  was  Keble's  pupil  at  Oriel,  and 
when  Keble  left  Oriel  for  his  curacy  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Long  Vacation  of  1823,  he  took  Froude  with 
him  to  read  for  his  degree.  He  took  with  him  ulti- 
mately two  other  pupils,  Robert  Wilberforce  and  Isaac 
Williams  of  Trinity.  One  of  them,  Isaac  Williams, 
has  left  some  reminiscences  of  the  time,  and  of  the 
terms  on  which  the  young  men  were  with  their  tutor, 


24  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

then  one  of  the  most  famous  men  at  Oxford.  They 
were  on  terms  of  the  utmost  freedom.  "  Master  is  the 
greatest  boy  of  them  all,"  was  the  judgment  of  the 
rustic  who  was  gardener,  groom,  and  parish  clerk  to 
Mr.  Keble.  Froude's  was  a  keen  logical  mind,  not 
easily  satisfied,  contemptuous  of  compromises  and 
evasions,  and  disposed  on  occasion  to  be  mischievous 
and  aggressive ;  and  with  Keble,  as  with  anybody 
else,  he  was  ready  to  dispute  and  try  every  form  of 
dialectical  experiment.  But  he  was  open  to  higher 
influences  than  those  of  logic,  and  in  Keble  he  saw 
what  subdued  and  won  him  to  boundless  veneration 
and  affection.  Keble  won  the  love  of  the  whole  little 
society ;  but  in  Froude  he  had  gained  a  disciple  who 
was  to  be  the  mouthpiece  and  champion  of  his  ideas, 
and  who  was  to  react  on  himself  and  carry  him  forward 
to  larger  enterprises  and  bolder  resolutions  than  by 
himself  he  would  have  thought  of.  Froude  took  in 
from  Keble  all  he  had  to  communicate — principles, 
convictions,  moral  rules  and  standards  of  life,  hopes, 
fears,  antipathies.  And  his  keenly-tempered  intellect, 
and  his  determination  and  high  courage,  gave  a  point 
and  an  impulse  of  their  own  to  Keble's  views  and 
purposes.  As  things  came  to  look  darker,  and 
dangers  seemed  more  serious  to  the  Church,  its  faith 
or  its  rights,  the  interchange  of  thought  between 
master  and  disciple,  in  talk  and  in  letter,  pointed 
more  and  more  to  the  coming  necessity  of  action  ;  and 
Froude  at  least  had  no  objections  to  the  business 
of  an  agitator.  But  all  this  was  very  gradual ;  things 
did  not  yet  go  beyond  discussion  ;  ideas,  views,  argu- 
ments were  examined  and  compared ;  and  Froude, 
with  all  his  dash,  felt  as  Keble  felt,  that  he  had  much 
to  learn  about  himself,  as  well  as  about  books  and 


ii  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  25 

things.  In  his  respect  for  antiquity,  in  his  dislike 
of  the  novelties  which  were  invading  Church  rules 
and  sentiments,  as  well  as  its  creeds,  in  his  jealousy 
of  the  State,  as  well  as  in  his  seriousness  of  self- 
discipline,  he  accepted  Keble's  guidance  and  influence 
more  and  more  ;  and  from  Keble  he  had  more  than 
one  lesson  of  self-distrust,  more  than  one  warning 
against  the  temptations  of  intellect.  "  Froude  told  me 
many  years  after,"  writes  one  of  his  friends,  "that 
Keble  once,  before  parting  with  him,  seemed  to  have 
something  on  his  mind  which  he  wished  to  say,  but 
shrank  from  saying,  while  waiting,  I  think,  for  a  coach. 
At  last  he  said,  just  before  parting,  '  Froude,  you 
thought  Law's  Serious  Call  was  a  clever  book ;  it 
seemed  to  me  as  if  you  had  said  the  Day  of  Judgment 
will  be  a  pretty  sight.'  This  speech,  Froude  told  me, 
had  a  great  effect  on  his  after  life."  * 

At  Easter  1826  Froude  was  elected  Fellow  of 
Oriel.  He  came  back  to  Oxford,  charged  with  Keble's 
thoughts  and  feelings,  and  from  his  more  eager  and 
impatient  temper,  more  on  the  look-out  for  ways  of 
giving  them  effect.  The  next  year  he  became  tutor, 
and  he  held  the  tutorship  till  1830.  But  he  found  at 
Oriel  a  colleague,  a  little  his  senior  in  age  and  stand- 
ing, of  whom  Froude  and  his  friends  as  yet  knew  little 
except  that  he  was  a  man  of  great  ability,  that  he  had 
been  a  favourite  of  Whately's,  and  that  in  a  loose  and 
rough  way  he  was  counted  among  the  few  Liberals 
and  Evangelicals  in  Oxford.  This  was  Mr.  Newman. 
Keble  had  been  shy  of  him,  and  Froude  would  at  first 
judge  him  by  Keble's  standard.  But  Newman  was 
just  at  this  time  "moving,"  as  he  expresses  it,  "out  of 
the  shadow  of  liberalism."  Living  not  apart  like 

1  Isaac  Williams's  MS.  Memoir. 


26  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

Keble,  but  in  the  same  college,  and  meeting  every 
day,  Froude  and  Newman  could  not  but  be  either 
strongly  and  permanently  repelled,  or  strongly  attracted. 
They  were  attracted  ;  attracted  with  a  force  which  at 
last  united  them  in  the  deepest  and  most  unreserved 
friendship.  Of  the  steps  of  this  great  change  in  the 
mind  and  fortunes  of  each  of  them  we  have  no  record  : 
intimacies  of  this  kind  grow  in  college  out  of  unnoticed 
and  unremembered  talks,  agreeing  or  differing,  out  of 
unconscious  disclosures  of  temper  and  purpose,  out  of 
walks  and  rides  and  quiet  breakfasts  and  common- 
room  arguments,  out  of  admirations  and  dislikes,  out  of 
letters  and  criticisms  and  questions ;  and  nobody  can 
tell  afterwards  how  they  have  come  about.  The 
change  was  gradual  and  deliberate.  Froude's  friends 
in  Gloucestershire,  the  Keble  family,  had  their  mis- 
givings about  Newman's  supposed  liberalism  ;  they  did 
not  much  want  to  have  to  do  with  him.  His  subtle 
and  speculative  temper  did  not  always  square  with 
Froude's  theology.  "  N.  is  a  fellow  that  I  like  more, 
the  more  I  think  of  him,"  Froude  wrote  in  1828; 
"only  I  would  give  a  few  odd  pence  if  he  were  not  a 
heretic."1  But  Froude,  who  saw  him  every  day,  and 
was  soon  associated  with  him  in  the  tutorship,  found 
a  spirit  more  akin  to  his  own  in  depth  and  freedom 
and  daring,  than  he  had  yet  encountered.  And 
Froude  found  Newman  just  in  that  maturing  state 
of  religious  opinion  in  which  a  powerful  mind  like 
Froude's  would  be  likely  to  act  decisively.  Each 
acted  on  the  other.  Froude  represented  Keble's 
ideas,  Keble's  enthusiasm.  Newman  gave  shape, 
foundation,  consistency,  elevation  to  the  Anglican 

1  Rent.  i.  232,  233.      In  1828,  Newman  had  preferred  Hawkins  to  Keble, 
for  Provost. 


n  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  27 

theology,  when  he  accepted  it,  which  Froude  had 
learned  from  Keble.  "  I  knew  him  first,"  we  read  in 
the  Apologia,  "in  1826,  and  was  in  the  closest  and 
most  affectionate  friendship  with  him  from  about  1829 
till  his  death  in  1836." x  But  this  was  not  all. 
Through  Froude,  Newman  came  to  know  and  to 
be  intimate  with  Keble  ;  and  a  sort  of  camaraderie 
arose,  of  very  independent  and  outspoken  people,  who 
acknowledged  Keble  as  their  master  and  counsellor. 

"  The  true  and  primary  author  of  it "  (the  Tractarian 
movement),  we  read  in  the  Apologia,  "as  is  usual  with 
great  motive  powers,  was  out  of  sight.  .  .  .  Need  I 
say  that  I  am  speaking  of  John  Keble  ?  "  The  state- 
ment is  strictly  true.  Froude  never  would  have  been 
the  man  he  was  but  for  his  daily  and  hourly  inter- 
course with  Keble ;  and  Froude  brought  to  bear  upon 
Newman's  mind,  at  a  critical  period  of  its  develop- 
ment, Keble's  ideas  and  feelings  about  religion  and 
the  Church,  Keble's  reality  of  thought  and  purpose, 
Keble's  transparent  and  saintly  simplicity.  And 
Froude,  as  we  know  from  a  well-known  saying  of 
his,2  brought  Keble  and  Newman  to  understand  one 
another,  when  the  elder  man  was  shy  and  suspicious 
of  the  younger,  and  the  younger,  though  full  of 
veneration  for  the  elder,  was  hardly  yet  in  full 
sympathy  with  what  was  most  characteristic  and  most 
cherished  in  the  elder's  religious  convictions.  Keble 
attracted  and  moulded  Froude  :  he  impressed  Froude 
with  his  strong  Churchmanship,  his  severity  and  reality 
of  life,  his  poetry  and  high  standard  of  scholarly  excel- 
lence. Froude  learned  from  him  to  be  anti-Erastian, 

1  Apol.  p.  84.  life  ?     Well,  if  I  was  asked  what  good 

2  Remains, i.  438;  Apol.  p.  77.    "Do  deed  I  have  ever  done,  I  should  say  I 
you   know   the   story  of  the  murderer  had  brought    Keble   and    Newman  to 
who  had  done  one  good  thing  in  his  understand  each  other." 


28  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

anti-methodistical,  anti-sentimental,  and  as  strong  in 
his  hatred  of  the  world,  as  contemptuous  of  popular 
approval,  as  any  methodist.  Yet  all  this  might  merely 
have  made  a  strong  impression,  or  formed  one  more 
marked  school  of  doctrine,  without  the  fierce  energy 
which  received  it  and  which  it  inspired.  But  Froude, 
in  accepting  Keble's  ideas,  resolved  to  make  them 
active,  public,  aggressive ;  and  he  found  in  Newman 
a  colleague  whose  bold  originality  responded  to  his 
own.  Together  they  worked  as  tutors  ;  together  they 
worked  when  their  tutorships  came  to  an  end  ;  together 
they  worked  when  thrown  into  companionship  in  their 
Mediterranean  voyage  in  the  winter  of  1832  and  the 
spring  of  1833.  They  came  back,  full  of  aspirations 
and  anxieties  which  spurred  them  on  ;  their  thoughts 
had  broken  out  in  papers  sent  home  from  time  to  time  to 
Rose's  British  Magazine — "  Home  Thoughts  Abroad," 
and  the  "  Lyra  Apostolica."  Then  came  the  meeting 
at  Hadleigh,  and  the  beginning  of  the  Tracts.  Keble 
had  given  the  inspiration,  Froude  had  given  the 
impulse ;  then  Newman  took  up  the  work,  and  the 
impulse  henceforward,  and  the  direction,  were  his. 

Doubtless,  many  thought  and  felt  like  them  about 
the  perils  which  beset  the  Church  and  religion. 
Loyalty  to  the  Church,  belief  in  her  divine  mission, 
allegiance  to  her  authority,  readiness  to  do  battle  for 
her  claims,  were  anything  but  extinct  in  her  ministers 
and  laity.  The  elements  were  all  about  of  sound  and 
devoted  Churchmanship.  Higher  ideas  of  the  Church 
than  the  popular  and  political  notion  of  it,  higher 
conceptions  of  Christian  doctrine  than  those  of  the 
ordinary  evangelical  theology — echoes  of  the  medita- 
tions of  a  remarkable  Irishman,  Mr.  Alexander  Knox— 
had  in  many  quarters  attracted  attention  in  the  works 


ii  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  29 

and  sermons  of  his  disciple,  Bishop  Jebb,  though  it  was 
not  till  the  movement  had  taken  shape  that  their  full 
significance  was  realised.  Others  besides  Keble  and 
Froude  and  Newman  were  seriously  considering  what 
could  best  be  done  to  arrest  the  current  which  was 
running  strong  against  the  Church,  and  discussing 
schemes  of  resistance  and  defence.  Others  were 
stirring  up  themselves  and  their  brethren  to  meet  the 
new  emergencies,  to  respond  to  the  new  call.  Some 
of  these  were  in  communication  with  the  Oriel  men, 
and  ultimately  took  part  with  them  in  organising 
vigorous  measures.  But  it  was  not  till  Mr.  Newman 
made  up  his  mind  to  force  on  the  public  mind,  in  a 
way  which  could  not  be  evaded,  the  great  article  of 
the  Creed — "I  believe  one  Catholic  and  Apostolic" 
Church " — that  the  movement  began.  And  for  the 
first  part  of  its  course,  it  was  concentrated  at  Oxford. 
It  was  the  direct  result  of  the  searchings  of  heart  and 
the  communings  for  seven  years,  from  1826  to  1833, 
of  the  three  men  who  have  been  the  subject  of  this 
chapter. 


CHAPTER    III1 

RICHARD    HURRELL    FROUDE 

THE  names  of  those  who  took  the  lead  in  this  move- 
ment are  familiar — Keble,  Newman,  Pusey,  Hugh 
James  Rose,  William  Palmer.  Much  has  been  written 
about  them  by  friends  and  enemies,  and  also  by  one 
of  themselves,  and  any  special  notice  of  them  is 
not  to  the  purpose  of  the  present  narrative.  But 
besides  these,  there  were  men  who  are  now  almost 
forgotten,  but  who  at  the  time  interested  their  con- 
temporaries, because  they  were  supposed  to  represent 
in  a  marked  way  the  spirit  and  character  of  the  move- 
ment, or  to  have  exercised  influence  upon  it.  They 
ought  not  to  be  overlooked  in  an  account  of  it.  One 
of  them  has  been  already  mentioned,  Mr.  Hurrell 
Froude.  Two  others  were  Mr.  Isaac  Williams  and  Mr. 
Charles  Marriott.  They  were  all  three  of  them  men 
whom  those  who  knew  them  could  never  forget— 
could  never  cease  to  admire  and  love. 

Hurrell  Froude  soon  passed  away  before  the  brunt 
of  the  fighting  came.  His  name  is  associated  with 
Mr.  Newman  and  Mr.  Keble,  but  it  is  little  more 


1  I  ought  to  say  that  I  was  not  per-  recollections  of  him  by  Lord  Blachford, 
sonally  acquainted  with  Mr.  Froude.  who  was  his  pupil  and  an  intimate 
I  have  subjoined  to  this  chapter  some  friend. 


CHAP,  in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  31 

than  a  name  to  those  who  now  talk  of  the  origin 
of  the  movement.  Yet  all  who  remember  him  agree 
in  assigning  to  him  an  importance  as  great  as  that 
of  any,  in  that  little  knot  of  men  whose  thoughts  and 
whose  courage  gave  birth  to  it. 

Richard  Hurrell  Froude  was  born  in  1803,  an<^  was 
thus  two  years  younger  than  Mr.  Newman,  who  was 
born  in  1801.  He  went  to  Eton,  and  in  1821  to  Oriel, 
where  he  was  a  pupil  of  Mr.  Keble,  and  where  he  was 
elected  Fellow,  along  with  Robert  Wilberforce,  at 
Easter  1826.  He  was  College  Tutor  from  1827  to 
1830,  having  Mr.  Newman  and  R.  Wilberforce  for 
colleagues.  His  health  failed  in  1831  and  led  to  much 
absence  in  warm  climates.  He  went  with  Mr.  New- 
man to  the  south  of  Europe  in  1832-33,  and  was 
with  him  at  Rome.  The  next  two  winters,  with  the 
intervening  year,  he  spent  in  the  West  Indies.  Early 
in  1836  he  died  at  Dartington — his  birthplace.  He 
was  at  the  Hadleigh  meeting,  in  July  1833,  when  the 
foundations  of  the  movement  were  laid ;  he  went 
abroad  that  winter,  and  was  not  much  in  England 
afterwards.  It  was  through  correspondence  that  he 
kept  up  his  intercourse  with  his  friends. 

Thus  he  was  early  cut  off  from  direct  and  personal 
action  on  the  course  which  things  took.  But  it  would 
be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  his  influence  on  the 
line  taken  and  on  the  minds  of  others  was  inconsider- 
able. It  would  be  more  true  to  say  that  with  one 
exception  no  one  was  more  responsible  for  the  impulse 
which  led  to  the  movement ;  no  one  had  more  to  do 
with  shaping  its  distinct  aims  and  its  moral  spirit  and 
character  in  its  first  stage ;  no  one  was  more  daring 
and  more  clear,  as  far  as  he  saw,  in  what  he  was  pre- 
pared for.  There  was  no  one  to  whom  his  friends  so 


32  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

much  looked  up  with  admiration  and  enthusiasm. 
There  was  no  "wasted  shade"1  in  Hurrell  Froude's 
disabled,  prematurely  shortened  life. 

Like  Henry  Marty n  he  was  made  by  strong  and 
even  merciless  self-discipline  over  a  strong  and  for  a 
long  time  refractory  nature.  He  was  a  man  of  great 
gifts,  with  much  that  was  most  attractive  and  noble ; 
but  joined  with  this  there  was  originally  in  his  char- 
acter a  vein  of  perversity  and  mischief,  always  in 
danger  of  breaking  out,  and  with  which  he  kept  up  a 
long  and  painful  struggle.  His  inmost  thought  and 
knowledge  of  himself  have  been  laid  bare  in  the  papers 
which  his  friends  published  after  his  death.  He  was 
in  the  habit  of  probing  his  motives  to  the  bottom, 
and  of  recording  without  mercy  what  he  thought  his 
self-deceits  and  affectations.  The  religious  world  of 
the  day  made  merry  over  his  methods  of  self-discip- 
line ;  but  whatever  may  be  said  of  them,  and  such 
things  are  not  easy  to  judge  of,  one  thing  is  manifest, 
that  they  were  true  and  sincere  efforts  to  conquer  what 
he  thought  evil  in  himself,  to  keep  himself  in  order, 
to  bring  his  inmost  self  into  subjection  to  the  law  and 
will  of  God.  The  self-chastening,  which  his  private 
papers  show,  is  no  passion  or  value  for  asceticism,  but 
a  purely  moral  effort  after  self-command  and  honesty 
of  character  ;  and  what  makes  the  struggle  so  touching 
is  its  perfect  reality  and  truth.  He  "  turned  his  thoughts 
on  that  desolate  wilderness,  his  own  conscience,  and 
said  what  he  saw  there."'  A  man  who  has  had  a 
good  deal  to  conquer  in  himself,  and  has  gone  a  good 
way  to  conquer  it,  is  not  apt  to  be  indulgent  to  self- 

1   "In  this  mortal  journeying  wasted  shade 
Is  worse  than  wasted  sunshine." 

HENRY  TAYLOR,  Sicilian  Summer,  v.  3. 
2  Remains,  Second  Part,  i.  47. 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  33 

deceit  or  indolence,  or  even  weakness.  The  basis  of 
Froude's  character  was  a  demand  which  would  not  be 
put  off  for  what  was  real  and  thorough  ;  an  implacable 
scorn  and  hatred  for  what  he  counted  shams  and  pre- 
tences. "  His  highest  ambition,"  he  used  to  say,  "was 
to  be  a  humdrum."1  The  intellectual  and  the  moral 
parts  of  his  character  were  of  a  piece.  The  tricks  and 
flimsinesses  of  a  bad  argument  provoked  him  as  much 
as  the  imposture  and  "flash"  of  insincere  sentiment 
and  fine  talking  ;  he  might  be  conscious  of  "  flash  "  in 
himself  and  his  friends,  and  he  would  admit  it  un- 
equivocally ;  but  it  was  as  unbearable  to  him  to  pretend 
not  to  see  a  fallacy  as  soon  as  it  was  detected,  as  it 
would  have  been  to  him  to  arrive  at  the  right  answer 
of  a  sum  or  a  problem  by  tampering  with  the  pro- 
cesses. Such  a  man,  with  strong  affections  and  keen 
perception  of  all  forms  of  beauty,  and  with  the  deepest 
desire  to  be  reverent  towards  all  that  had  a  right  to 
reverence,  would  find  himself  in  the  most  irritating 
state  of  opposition  and  impatience  with  much  that 
passed  as  religion  round  him.  Principles  not  at- 
tempted to  be  understood  and  carried  into  practice, 
smooth  self-complacency  among  those  who  looked 
down  on  a  blind  and  unspiritual  world,  the  continual 
provocation  of  worthless  reasoning  and  ignorant  plati- 
tudes, the  dull  unconscious  stupidity  of  people  who 
could  not  see  that  the  times  were  critical — that  truth 
had  to  be  defended,  and  that  it  was  no  easy  or  light- 
hearted  business  to  defend  it  —  threw  him  into  an 
habitual  attitude  of  defiance,  and  half- amused,  half- 
earnest  contradiction,  which  made  him  feared  by 
loose  reasoners  and  pretentious  talkers,  and  even  by 
quiet  easy  -  going  friends,  who  unexpectedly  found 

1  Remains,  i.  82. 
D 


34  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

themselves  led  on  blindfold,  with  the  utmost  gravity, 
into  traps  and  absurdities  by  the  wiles  of  his 
mischievous  dialectic.  This  was  the  outside  look 
of  his  relentless  earnestness.  People  who  did  not 
like  him,  or  his  views,  and  who,  perhaps,  had 
winced  under  his  irony,  naturally  put  down  his 
strong  language,  which  on  occasion  could  certainly 
be  unceremonious,  to  flippancy  and  arrogance.  But 
within  the  circle  of  those  whom  he  trusted,  or  of  those 
who  needed  at  any  time  his  help,  another  side  dis- 
closed itself — a  side  of  the  most  genuine  warmth  of 
affection,  an  awful  reality  of  devoutness,  which  it  was 
his  great  and  habitual  effort  to  keep  hidden,  a  high 
simplicity  of  unworldliness  and  generosity,  and  in 
spite  of  his  daring  mockeries  of  what  was  common- 
place or  showy,  the  most  sincere  and  deeply  felt 
humility  with  himself.  Dangerous  as  he  was  often 
thought  to  be  in  conversation,  one  of  the  features 
of  his  character  which  has  impressed  itself  on  the 
memory  of  one  who  knew  him  well,  was  his  "patient, 
winning  considerateness  in  discussion,  which,  with  other 
qualities,  endeared  him  to  those  to  whom  he  opened  his 
heart."1  "It  is  impossible,"  writes  James  Mozley  in 
1833,  with  a  mixture  of  amusement,  speaking  of  the 
views  about  celibacy  which  were  beginning  to  be  current, 
"to  talk  with  Froude  without  committing  one's  self  on 
such  subjects  as  these,  so  that  by  and  by  I  expect  the 
tergiversants  will  be  a  considerable  party."  His  letters, 
with  their  affectionately  playful  addresses,  Sai/Awie, 
alvorare,  Treirov,  Carissime,  "Sir,  my  dear  friend"  or 
"'Ap7eiW  o%  apurre,  have  you  not  been  a  spoon  ?"  are 
full  of  the  most  delightful  ease  and  verve  and  sympathy. 
With  a  keen  sense  of  English  faults  he  was, 

1  Apologia,  p.  84. 


RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE 


35 


as  Cardinal  Newman  has  said,  "an  Englishman  to  the 
backbone "  ;  and  he  was,  further,  a  fastidious,  high- 
tempered  English  gentleman,  in  spite  of  his  declaiming 
about  "pampered  aristocrats"  and  the  "gentleman 
heresy."  His  friends  thought  of  him  as  of  the  "  young 
Achilles,"  with  his  high  courage,  and  noble  form,  and 
"  eagle  eye,"  made  for  such  great  things,  but  appointed 
so  soon  to  die.  "  Who  can  refrain  from  tears  at  the 
thought  of  that  bright  and  beautiful  Froude  ?  "  is  the 
expression  of  one  of  them  shortly  before  his  death,  and 
when  it  was  quite  certain  that  the  doom  which  had  so 
long  hung  over  him  was  at  hand.1  He  had  the  love 
of  doing,  for  the  mere  sake  of  doing,  what  was  difficult 
or  even  dangerous  to  do,  which  is  the  mainspring  of 
characteristic  English  sports  and  games.  He  loved 
the  sea ;  he  liked  to  sail  his  own  boat,  and  enjoyed 
rough  weather,  and  took  interest  in  the  niceties  of 


1  The  following  shows  the  feeling 
about  him  in  friends  apt  to  be  severe 
critics  : — "The  contents  of  the  present 
collection  are  rather  fragments  and 
sketches  than  complete  compositions. 
This  might  be  expected  in  the  works 
of  a  man  whose  days  were  few  and 
interrupted  by  illness,  if  indeed  that 
may  be  called  an  interruption,  which 
was  every  day  sensibly  drawing  him 
to  his  grave.  In  Mr.  Froude's  case, 
however,  we  cannot  set  down  much  of 
this  incompleteness  to  the  score  of 
illness.  The  strength  of  his  religious 
impressions,  the  boldness  and  clearness 
of  his  views,  his  long  habits  of  self- 
denial,  and  his  unconquerable  energy  of 
mind,  triumphed  over  weakness  and 
decay,  till  men  with  all  their  health 
and  strength  about  them  might  gaze 
upon  his  attenuated  form,  struck  with  a 
certain  awe  of  wonderment  at  the  bright- 
ness of  his  wit,  the  intenseness  of  his 
mental  vision,  and  the  iron  strength  of 
his  argument.  .  .  .  We  will  venture  a 
remark  as  to  that  ironical  turn,  which 


certainly  does  appear  in  various  shapes 
in  the  first  part  of  these  Remains. 
Unpleasant  as  irony  may  sometimes 
be,  there  need  not  go  with  it,  and  in 
this  instance  there  did  not  go  with  it, 
the  smallest  real  asperity  of  temper. 
Who  that  remembers  the  inexpressible 
sweetness  of  his  smile,  and  the  deep 
and  melancholy  pity  with  which  he 
would  speak  of  those  whom  he  felt  to  be 
the  victims  of  modern  delusions,  would 
not  be  forward  to  contradict  such  a 
suspicion  ?  Such  expressions,  we  will 
venture  to  say,  and  not  harshness, 
anger,  or  gloom,  animate  the  features 
of  that  countenance  which  will  never 
cease  to  haunt  the  memory  of  those 
who  knew  him.  His  irony  arose  from 
that  peculiar  mode  in  which  he  viewed 
all  earthly  things,  himself  and  all  that 
was  dear  to  him  not  excepted.  It  was 
his  poetry."  From  an  article  in  the 
British  Critic,  April  1840,  p.  396,  by 
Mr.  Thomas  Mozley,  quoted  in  Letters 
of  J.  B.  Mozley,  p.  102. 


36  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

seamanship  and  shipcraft.  He  was  a  bold  rider  across 
country.  With  a  powerful  grasp  on  mathematical 
truths  and  principles,  he  entered  with  whole-hearted 
zest  into  inviting  problems,  or  into  practical  details 
of  mechanical  or  hydrostatic  or  astronomical  science. 
His  letters  are  full  of  such  observations,  put  in  a 
way  which  he  thought  would  interest  his  friends,  and 
marked  by  his  strong  habit  of  getting  into  touch  with 
what  was  real  and  of  the  substance  of  questions.  He 
applied  his  thoughts  to  architecture  with  a  power  and 
originality  which  at  the  time  were  not  common.  No 
one  who  only  cared  for  this  world  could  be  more 
attracted  and  interested  than  he  was  by  the  wonder 
and  beauty  of  its  facts  and  appearances.  With  the 
deepest  allegiance  to  his  home  and  reverence  for  its 
ties  and  authority,  a  home  of  the  old-fashioned  eccle- 
siastical sort,  sober,  manly,  religious,  orderly,  he  carried 
into  his  wider  life  the  feelings  with  which  he  had 
been  brought  up ;  bold  as  he  was,  his  reason  and 
his  character  craved  for  authority,  but  authority  which 
morally  and  reasonably  he  could  respect.  Mr.  Keble's 
goodness  and  purity  subdued  him,  and  disposed  him 
to  accept  without  reserve  his  master's  teaching :  and 
towards  Mr.  Keble,  along  with  an  outside  show  of 
playful  criticism  and  privileged  impertinence,  there 
was  a  reverence  which  governed  Froude's  whole 
nature.  In  the  wild  and  rough  heyday  of  reform,  he 
was  a  Tory  of  the  Tories.  But  when  authority  failed 
him,  from  cowardice  or  stupidity  or  self-interest,  he 
could  not  easily  pardon  it ;  and  he  was  ready  to  startle 
his  friends  by  proclaiming  himself  a  Radical,  prepared 
for  the  sake  of  the  highest  and  greatest  interests  to 
sacrifice  all  second-rate  and  subordinate  ones. 

When  his  friends,  after  his  death,  published  selec- 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  37 

tions  from  his  journals  and  letters,  the  world  was 
shocked  by  what  seemed  his  amazing  audacity  both  of 
thought  and  expression  about  a  number  of  things  and 
persons  which  it  was  customary  to  regard  as  almost 
beyond  the  reach  of  criticism.  The  Remains  lent 
themselves  admirably  to  the  controversial  process  of 
culling  choice  phrases  and  sentences  and  epithets 
surprisingly  at  variance  with  conventional  and  popular 
estimates.  Friends  were  pained  and  disturbed  ;  foes 
naturally  enough  could  not  hold  in  their  overflowing 
exultation  at  such  a  disclosure  of  the  spirit  of  the 
movement.  Sermons  and  newspapers  drew  attention 
to  Froude's  extravagances  with  horror  and  disgust. 
The  truth  is  that  if  the  off-hand  sayings  in  conversation 
or  letters  of  any  man  of  force  and  wit  and  strong 
convictions  about  the  things  and  persons  that  he  con- 
demns, were  made  known  to  the  world,  they  would  by 
themselves  have  much  the  same  look  of  flippancy, 
injustice,  impertinence  to  those  who  disagreed  in 
opinion  with  the  speaker  or  writer ;  they  are  allowed 
for,  or  they  are  not  allowed  for  by  others,  according  to 
what  is  known  of  his  general  character.  The  friends 
who  published  Froude's  Remains  knew  what  he 
was ;  they  knew  the  place  and  proportion  of  the  fierce 
and  scornful  passages  ;  they  knew  that  they  really  did 
not  go  beyond  the  liberty  and  the  frank  speaking 
which  most  people  give  themselves  in  the  abandon  and 
understood  exaggeration  of  intimate  correspondence 
and  talk.  But  they  miscalculated  the  effect  on  those 
who  did  not  know  him,  or  whose  interest  it  was  to 
make  the  most  of  the  advantage  given  them.  They 
seem  to  have  expected  that  the  picture  which 
they  presented  of  their  friend's  transparent  sincerity 
and  singleness  of  aim,  manifested  amid  so  much  pain 


38  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

and  self-abasement,  would  have  touched  readers  more. 
They  miscalculated  in  supposing  that  the  proofs  of  so 
much  reality  of  religious  earnestness  would  carry  off 
the  offence  of  vehement  language,  which  without  these 
proofs  might  naturally  be  thought  to  show  mere 
random  violence.  At  any  rate  the  result  was  much 
natural  and  genuine  irritation,  which  they  were  hardly 
prepared  for.  Whether  on  general  grounds  they  were 
wise  in  startling  and  vexing  friends,  and  putting  fresh 
weapons  into  the  hands  of  opponents  by  their  frank 
disclosure  of  so  unconventional  a  character,  is  a  ques- 
tion which  may  have  more  than  one  answer ;  but 
one  thing  is  certain,  they  were  not  wise,  if  they  only 
desired  to  forward  the  immediate  interests  of  their 
party  or  cause.  It  was  not  the  act  of  cunning  con- 
spirators ;  it  was  the  act  of  men  who  were  ready 
to  show  their  hands,  and  take  the  consequences. 
Undoubtedly,  they  warned  off  many  who  had  so 
far  gone  along  with  the  movement,  and  who  now 
drew  back.  But  if  the  publication  was  a  mistake,  it 
was  the  mistake  of  men  confident  in  their  own 
straightforwardness. 

There  is  a  natural  Nemesis  to  all  over-strong  and 
exaggerated  language.  The  weight  of  Fronde's  judg- 
ments was  lessened  by  the  disclosure  of  his  strong 
words,  and  his  dashing  fashion  of  condemnation  and 
dislike  gave  a  precedent  for  the  violence  of  shallower 
men.  But  to  those  who  look  back  on  them  now, 
though  there  can  be  no  wonder  that  at  the  time  they 
excited  such  an  outcry,  their  outspoken  boldness  hardly 
excites  surprise.  Much  of  it  might  naturally  be  put 
down  to  the  force  of  first  impressions ;  much  of  it  is 
the  vehemence  of  an  Englishman  who  claims  the 
liberty  of  criticising  and  finding  fault  at  home  ;  much 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  39 

of  it  was  the  inevitable  vehemence  of  a  reformer. 
Much  of  it  seems  clear  foresight  of  what  has  since  come 
to  be  recognised.  His  judgments  on  the  Reformers, 
startling  as  they  were  at  the  time,  are  not  so  very 
different,  as  to  the  facts  of  the  case,  from  what  most 
people  on  all  sides  now  agree  in ;  and  as  to  their 
temper  and  theology,  from  what  most  churchmen 
would  now  agree  in.  Whatever  allowances  may  be 
made  for  the  difficulties  of  their  time,  and  these  allow- 
ances ought  to  be  very  great,  and  however  well  they 
may  have  done  parts  of  their  work,  such  as  the  trans- 
lations and  adaptations  of  the  Prayer  Book,  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  the  divines  of  the  Reformation  never  can 
be  again,  with  their  confessed  Calvinism,  with  their  shift- 
ing opinions,  their  extravagant  deference  to  the  foreign 
oracles  of  Geneva  and  Zurich,  their  subservience  to  bad 
men  in  power,  the  heroes  and  saints  of  churchmen. 
But  when  all  this  is  said,  it  still  remains  true  that 
Froude  was  often  intemperate  and  unjust.  In  the 
hands  of  the  most  self-restrained  and  considerate  of  its 
leaders,  the  movement  must  anyhow  have  provoked 
strong  opposition,  and  given  great  offence.  The 
surprise  and  the  general  ignorance  were  too  great ;  the 
assault  was  too  rude  and  unexpected.  But  Froude's 
strong  language  gave  it  a  needless  exasperation. 

Froude  was  a  man  strong  in  abstract  thought  and 
imagination,  who  wanted  adequate  knowledge.  His 
canons  of  judgment  were  not  enlarged,  corrected,  and 
strengthened  by  any  reading  or  experience  commen- 
surate with  his  original  powers  of  reasoning  or  in- 
vention. He  was  quite  conscious  of  it,  and  did  his 
best  to  fill  up  the  gap  in  his  intellectual  equipment. 
He  showed  what  he  might  have  done  under  more 
favouring  circumstances  in  a  very  interesting  volume 


40  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

on  Becket's  history  and  letters.  But  circumstances 
were  hopelessly  against  him  ;  he  had  not  time,  he  had 
not  health  and  strength,  for  the  learning  which  he  so 
needed,  which  he  so  longed  for.  But  wherever  he 
could,  he  learned.  He  was  quite  ready  to  submit 
his  prepossessions  to  the  test  and  limitation  of  facts. 
Eager  and  quick-sighted,  he  was  often  apt  to  be  hasty 
in  conclusions  from  imperfect  or  insufficient  premisses; 
but  even  about  what  he  saw  most  clearly  he  was 
willing  to  hold  himself  in  suspense,  when  he  found 
that  there  was  something  more  to  know.  Cardinal 
Newman  has  noted  two  deficiencies  which,  in  his 
opinion,  were  noticeable  in  Froude.  "He  had  no 
turn  for  theology  as  such  "  ;  and,  further,  he  goes  on  : 
"  I  should  say  that  his  power  of  entering  into  the 
minds  of  others  was  not  equal  to  his  other  gifts  " — a 
remark  which  he  illustrates  by  saying  that  Froude 
could  not  believe  that  "  I  really  held  the  Roman 
Church  to  be  antichristian."  The  want  of  this  power 
— in  which  he  stood  in  such  sharp  contrast  to  his 
friend — might  be  either  a  strength  or  a  weakness ;  a 
strength,  if  his  business  was  only  to  fight ;  a  weak- 
ness, if  it  was  to  attract  and  persuade.  But  Froude 
was  made  for  conflict,  not  to  win  disciples.  Some 
wild  solemn  poetry,  marked  by  deep  feeling  and 
direct  expression,  is  scattered  through  his  letters,1 
kindled  always  by  things  and  thoughts  of  the  highest 
significance,  and  breaking  forth  with  force  and  fire. 
But  probably  the  judgment  passed  on  him  by  a  clever 
friend,  from  the  examination  of  his  handwriting,  was  a 
true  one  :  "  This  fellow  has  a  great  deal  of  imagina- 
tion, but  not  the  imagination  of  a  poet."  He  felt  that 

1  Such   as   the    "  Daniel  "    in    the      tween  Old  Self  and   New  Self,"  and 
Lyra  Apostolica,   the    "  Dialogue    be-      the  lines  in  the  Remains  (i.  208,  209). 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  41 

even  beyond  poetry  there  are  higher  things  than 
anything  that  imagination  can  work  upon.  It  was  a 
feeling  which  made  him  blind  to  the  grandeur  of 
Milton's  poetry.  He  saw  in  it  only  an  intrusion  into 
the  most  sacred  of  sanctities. 

It  was  this  fearless  and  powerful  spirit,  keen 
and  quick  to  see  inferences  and  intolerant  of  com- 
promises, that  the  disturbances  of  Roman  Catholic 
Emancipation  and  of  the  Reform  time  roused  from 
the  common  round  of  pursuits,  natural  to  a  serious  and 
thoughtful  clergyman  of  scholarlike  mind  and  as  yet 
no  definite  objects,  and  brought  him  with  all  his  en- 
thusiasm and  thoroughness  into  a  companionship  with 
men  who  had  devoted  their  lives,  and  given  up  every 
worldly  object,  to  save  the  Church  by  raising  it  to  its 
original  idea  and  spirit.  Keble  had  lifted  his  pupil's 
thoughts  above  mere  dry  and  unintelligent  orthodoxy, 
and  Froude  had  entered  with  earnest  purpose  into 
Church  ways  of  practical  self  -  discipline  and  self- 
correction.  Bishop  Lloyd's  lectures  had  taught  him 
and  others,  to  the  surprise  of  many,  that  the  familiar 
and  venerated  Prayer  Book  was  but  the  reflexion  of 
mediaeval  and  primitive  devotion,  still  embodied  in  its 
Latin  forms  in  the  Roman  Service  books ;  and  so 
indirectly  had  planted  in  their  minds  the  idea  of  the 
historical  connexion,  and  in  a  very  profound  way  the 
spiritual  sympathy,  of  the  modern  with  the  pre- 
Reformation  Church.  But  it  is  not  till  1829  or  1830 
that  we  begin  in  his  Remains  to  see  in  him  the 
sense  of  a  pressing  and  anxious  crisis  in  religious 
matters.  In  the  summer  of  1829  he  came  more  closely 
than  hitherto  across  Mr.  Newman's  path.  They 
had  been  Fellows  together  since  1826,  and  Tutors 
since  1827.  Mr.  Froude,  with  his  Toryism  and  old- 


42  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

fashioned  churchmanship,  would  not  unnaturally  be 
shy  of  a  friend  of  Whately's  with  his  reputation  for 
theological  liberalism.  Froude's  first  letter  to  Mr. 
Newman  is  in  August  1828.  It  is  the  letter  of  a 
friendly  and  sympathising  colleague  in  college  work, 
glad  to  be  free  from  the  "  images  of  impudent  under- 
graduates " ;  he  inserts  some  lines  of  verse,  talks 
about  Dollond  and  telescopes,  and  relates  how  he  and 
a  friend  got  up  at  half-past  two  in  the  morning,  and 
walked  half  a  mile  to  see  Mercury  rise  ;  he  writes 
about  his  mathematical  studies  and  reading  for  orders, 
and  how  a  friend  had  "  read  half  through  Prideaux 
and  yet  accuses  himself  of  idleness  "  ;  but  there  is  no 
interchange  of  intimate  thought.  Mr.  Newman  was 
at  this  time,  as  he  has  told  us,  drifting  away  from 
under  the  shadow  of  liberalism  ;  and  in  Froude  he 
found  a  man  who,  without  being  a  liberal,  was  as 
quick -sighted,  as  courageous,  and  as  alive  to  great 
thoughts  and  new  hopes  as  himself.  Very  different  in 
many  ways,  they  were  in  this  alike,  that  the  common- 
place notions  of  religion  and  the  Church  were  utterly 
unsatisfactory  to  them,  and  that  each  had  the  capacity 
for  affectionate  and  whole-hearted  friendship.  The 
friendship  began  and  lasted  on,  growing  stronger  and 
deeper  to  the  end.  And  this  was  not  all.  Froude's 
friendship  with  Mr.  Newman  overcame  Mr.  Keble's 
hesitations  about  Mr.  Newman's  supposed  liberalism. 
Mr.  Newman  has  put  on  record  what  he  thought  and 
felt  about  Froude ;  no  one,  probably,  of  the  many 
whom  Cardinal  Newman's  long  life  has  brought  round 
him,  ever  occupied  Froude's  place  in  his  heart. 
The  correspondence  shows  in  part  the  way  in  which 
Froude's  spirit  rose,  under  the  sense  of  having  such  a 
friend  to  work  with  in  the  cause  which  day  by  day 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  43 

grew  greater  and  more  sacred  in  the  eyes  of  both. 
Towards  Mr.  Keble  Froude  felt  like  a  son  to  a  father ; 
towards  Mr.  Newman  like  a  soldier  to  his  comrade, 
and  him  the  most  splendid  and  boldest  of  warriors. 
Each  mind  caught  fire  from  the  other,  till  the  high 
enthusiasm  of  the  one  was  quenched  in  an  early  death. 
Shortly  after  this  friendship  began,  the  course  of 
events  also  began  which  finally  gave  birth  to  the 
Oxford  movement.  The  break-up  of  parties  caused 
by  the  Roman  Catholic  emancipation  was  followed  by 
the  French  and  Belgian  revolutions  of  1830,  and  these 
changes  gave  a  fresh  stimulus  to  all  the  reforming 
parties  in  England  —  Whigs,  Radicals,  and  liberal 
religionists.  Froude's  letters  mark  the  influence  of 
these  changes  on  his  mind.  They  stirred  in  him  the 
fiercest  disgust  and  indignation,  and  as  soon  as  the 
necessity  of  battle  became  evident  to  save  the  Church 
— and  such  a  necessity  was  evident — he  threw  himself 
into  it  with  all  his  heart,  and  his  attitude  was  hence- 
forth that  of  a  determined  and  uncompromising  com- 
batant. "  Froude  is  growing  stronger  and  stronger  in 
his  sentiments  every  day,"  writes  James  Mozley,  in 
1832,  "and  cuts  about  him  on  all  sides.  It  is  ex- 
tremely fine  to  hear  him  talk.  The  aristocracy  of  the 
country  at  present  are  the  chief  objects  of  his  vitupera- 
tion, and  he  decidedly  sets  himself  against  the  modern 
character  of  the  gentleman,  and  thinks  that  the  Church 
will  eventually  depend  for  its  support,  as  it  always  did 
in  its  most  influential  times,  on  the  very  poorest 
classes."  "  I  would  not  set  down  anything  that 
Froude  says  for  his  deliberate  opinion,"  writes  James 
Mozley  a  year  later,  "  for  he  really  hates  the  present 
state  of  things  so  excessively  that  any  change  would 
be  a  relief  to  him."  .  .  .  "  Froude  is  staying  up,  and 


44  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

I  see  a  great  deal  of  him."  ..."  Froude  is  most 
enthusiastic  in  his  plans,  and  says,  'What  fun  it  is 
living  in  such  times  as  these !  how  could  one  now  go 
back  to  the  times  of  old  Tory  humbug  ? ' '  From 
henceforth  his  position  among  his  friends  was  that  of 
the  most  impatient  and  aggressive  of  reformers,  the 
one  who  most  urged  on  his  fellows  to  outspoken 
language  and  a  bold  line  of  action.  They  were  not 
men  to  hang  back  and  be  afraid,  but  they  were  cautious 
and  considerate  of  popular  alarms  and  prejudices,  com- 
pared with  Froude's  fearlessness.  Other  minds  were 
indeed  moving — minds  as  strong  as  his,  indeed,  it  may 
be,  deeper,  more  complex,  more  amply  furnished,  with 
a  wider  range  of  vision  and  a  greater  command  of  the 
field.  But  while  he  lived,  he  appears  as  the  one  who 
spurs  on  and  incites,  where  others  hesitate.  He  is 
the  one  by  whom  are  visibly  most  felt  the  gaudia 
certaminis,  and  the  confidence  of  victory,  and  the  most 
profound  contempt  for  the  men  and  the  ideas  of  the 
boastful  and  short-sighted  present. 

In  this  unsparing  and  absorbing  warfare,  what  did 
Froude  aim  at  —  what  was  the  object  he  sought  to 
bring  about,  what  were  the  obstacles  he  sought  to 
overthrow  ? 

He  was  accused,  as  was  most  natural,  of  Romanis- 
ing ;  of  wishing  to  bring  back  Popery.  It  is  perfectly 
certain  that  this  was  not  what  he  meant,  though  he  did 
not  care  for  the  imputation  of  it.  He  was,  perhaps, 
the  first  Englishman  who  attempted  to  do  justice  to 
Rome,  and  to  use  friendly  language  of  it,  without  the 
intention  of  joining  it.  But  what  he  fought  for  was  not 
Rome,  not  even  a  restoration  of  unity,  but  a  Church  of 
England  such  as  it  was  conceived  of  by  the  Caroline 
divines  and  the  Non-jurors.  The  great  break-up  of 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  45 

1830  had  forced  on  men  the  anxious  question,  "What 
is  the  Church  as  spoken  of  in  England  ?  Is  it  the 
Church  of  Christ  ? "  and  the  answers  were  various. 
Hooker  had  said  it  was  "  the  nation  "  ;  and  in  entirely 
altered  circumstances,  with  some  qualifications,  Dr. 
Arnold  said  the  same.  It  was  "the  Establishment" 
according  to  the  lawyers  and  politicians,  both  Whig 
and  Tory.  It  was  an  invisible  and  mystical  body, 
said  the  Evangelicals.  It  was  the  aggregate  of 
separate  congregations,  said  the  Nonconformists.  It 
was  the  parliamentary  creation  of  the  Reformation, 
said  the  Erastians.  The  true  Church  was  the 
communion  of  the  Pope,  the  pretended  Church  was 
a  legalised  schism,  said  the  Roman  Catholics.  All 
these  ideas  were  floating  about,  loose  and  vague, 
among  people  who  talked  much  about  the  Church. 
Whately,  with  his  clear  sense,  had  laid  down  that  it 
was  a  divine  religious  society,  distinct  in  its  origin 
and  existence,  distinct  in  its  attributes  from  any 
other.  But  this  idea  had  fallen  dead,  till  Froude 
and  his  friends  put  new  life  into  it.  Froude  accepted 
Whately's  idea  that  the  Church  of  England  was  the 
one  historic  uninterrupted  Church,  than  which  there 
could  be  no  other,  locally  in  England ;  but  into  this 
Froude  read  a  great  deal  that  never  was  and  never 
could  be  in  Whately's  thoughts.  Whately  had  gone 
very  far  in  viewing  the  Church  from  without  as  a  great 
and  sacred  corporate  body.  Casting  aside  the  Erastian 
theory,  he  had  claimed  its  right  to  exist,  and  if  neces- 
sary, govern  itself,  separate  from  the  state.  He  had 
recognised  excommunication  as  its  natural  and  inde- 
feasible instrument  of  government.  But  what  the  in- 
ternal life  of  the  Church  was,  what  should  be  its  teaching 
and  organic  system,  and  what  was  the  standard  and 


46  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

proof  of  these,  Whately  had  left  unsaid.  And  this  out- 
line Froude  filled  up.  For  this  he  went  the  way  to 
which  the  Prayer  Book,  with  its  Offices,  its  Liturgy,  its 
Ordination  services,  pointed  him.  With  the  divines 
who  had  specially  valued  the  Prayer  Book,  and  taught 
in  its  spirit,  Bishop  Wilson,  William  Law,  Hammond, 
Ken,  Laud,  Andrewes,  he  went  back  to  the  times  and 
the  sources  from  which  the  Prayer  Book  came  to  us,  the 
early  Church,  the  reforming  Church — for  such  with  all 
its  faults  it  was — of  the  eleventh,  twelfth,  and  thirteenth 
centuries,  before  the  hopelessly  corrupt  and  fatal  times 
of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  which  led  to  the 
break-up  of  the  sixteenth.  Thus  to  the  great  question, 
What  is  the  Church  ?  he  gave  without  hesitation,  and 
gave  to  the  end,  the  same  answer  that  Anglicans  gave  and 
are  giving  still.  But  he  added  two  points  which  were 
then  very  new  to  the  ears  of  English  Churchmen  :  (i) 
that  there  were  great  and  to  most  people  unsuspected 
faults  and  shortcomings  in  the  English  Church,  for  some 
of  which  the  Reformation  was  gravely  responsible  5(2) 
that  the  Roman  Church  was  more  right  than  we  had 
been  taught  to  think  in  many  parts  both  of  principle 
and  practice,  and  that  our  quarrel  with  it  on  these 
points  arose  from  our  own  ignorance  and  prejudices. 
To  people  who  had  taken  for  granted  all  their  lives 
that  the  Church  was  thoroughly  "Protestant"  and 
thoroughly  right  in  its  Protestantism,  and  that  Rome 
was  Antichrist,  these  confident  statements  came  with 
a  shock.  He  did  not  enter  much  into  dogmatic 
questions.  As  far  as  can  be  judged  from  his 
Remains,  the  one  point  of  doctrine  on  which  he  laid 
stress,  as  being  inadequately  recognised  and  taught 
in  the  then  condition  of  the  English  Church,  was 
the  primitive  doctrine  of  the  Eucharist.  His  other 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  47 

criticisms  pointed  to  practical  and  moral  matters  ;  the 
spirit  of  Erastianism,  the  low  standard  of  life  and 
purpose  and  self-discipline  in  the  clergy,  the  low  tone 
of  the  current  religious  teaching.  The  Evangelical 
teaching  seemed  to  him  a  system  of  unreal  words. 
The  opposite  school  was  too  self-complacent,  too 
comfortable,  too  secure  in  its  social  and  political 
alliances ;  and  he  was  bent  on  shaming  people  into 
severer  notions.  "  We  will  have  a  vocabularium 
apostolicum,  and  I  will  start  it  with  four  words  : 
'  pampered  aristocrats,'  '  resident  gentlemen,'  '  smug 
parsons,'  and  ' pauperes  Christi'  I  shall  use  the  first 
on  all  occasions  ;  it  seems  to  me  just  to  hit  the  thing." 
"  I  think  of  putting  the  view  forward  (about  new 
monasteries),  under  the  title  of  a  '  Project  for  Reviving 
Religion  in  Great  Towns.'  Certainly  colleges  of 
unmarried  priests  (who  might,  of  course,  retire  to  a 
living,  when  they  could  and  liked)  would  be  the 
cheapest  possible  way  of  providing  effectively  for  the 
spiritual  wants  of  a  large  population."  And  his  great 
quarrel  with  the  existing  state  of  things  was  that  the 
spiritual  objects  of  the  Church  were  overlaid  and  lost 
sight  of  in  the  anxiety  not  to  lose  its  political  position. 
In  this  direction  he  was,  as  he  proclaims  himself,  an 
out-and-out  Radical,  and  he  was  prepared  at  once  to 
go  very  far.  "  If  a  national  Church  means  a  Church 
without  discipline,  my  argument  for  discipline  is  an 
argument  against  a  national  Church ;  and  the  best 
thing  we  can  do  is  to  unnationalise  ours  as  soon  as 
possible  "  ;  "  let  us  tell  the  truth  and  shame  the  devil  ; 
let  us  give  up  a  national  Church  and  have  a  real  one." 
His  criticism  did  not  diminish  in  severity,  or  his  pro- 
posals become  less  daring,  as  he  felt  that  his  time  was 
growing  short  and  the  hand  of  death  was  upon  him. 


48  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

But  to  the  end,  the  elevation  and  improvement  of  the 
English  Church  remained  his  great  purpose.  To  his 
friend,  as  we  know,  the  Roman  Church  was  either  the 
Truth  or  Antichrist.  To  Froude  it  was  neither  the 
whole  Truth  nor  Antichrist ;  but  like  the  English 
Church  itself,  a  great  and  defective  Church,  whose 
defects  were  the  opposite  to  ours,  and  which  we  should 
do  wisely  to  learn  from  rather  than  abuse.  But  to  the 
last  his  allegiance  never  wavered  to  the  English 
Church. 

It  is  very  striking  to  come  from  Froude's  boisterous 
freedom  in  his  letters  to  his  sermons  and  the  papers  he 
prepared  for  publication.  In  his  sermons  his  manner 
of  writing  is  severe  and  restrained  even  to  dryness.  If 
they  startle  it  is  by  the  force  and  searching  point  of 
an  idea,  not  by  any  strength  of  words.  The  style  is 
chastened,  simple,  calm,  with  the  most  careful  avoidance 
of  over-statement  or  anything  rhetorical.  And  so  in 
his  papers,  his  mode  of  argument,  forcible  and  cogent 
as  it  is,  avoids  all  appearance  of  exaggeration  or  even 
illustrative  expansion  ;  it  is  all  muscle  and  sinew  ;  it  is 
modelled  on  the  argumentative  style  of  Bishop  Butler, 
and  still  more,  of  William  Law.  No  one  could  suppose 
from  these  papers  Froude's  fiery  impetuosity,  or  the 
frank  daring  of  his  disrespectful  vocabulary.  Those 
who  can  read  between  the  lines  can  trace  the  grave 
irony  which  clung  everywhere  to  his  deep  earnestness. 

There  was  yet  another  side  of  Froude's  character 
which  was  little  thought  of  by  his  critics,  or  recognised 
by  all  his  friends.  With  all  his  keenness  of  judgment 
and  all  his  readiness  for  conflict,  some  who  knew  him 
best  were  impressed  by  the  melancholy  which  hung  over 
his  life,  and  which,  though  he  ignored  it,  they  could 
detect.  It  is  remembered  still  by  Cardinal  Newman. 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  49 

"  I  thought,"  wrote  Mr.  Isaac  Williams,  "that  knowing 
him,  I  better  understood  Hamlet,  a  person  most  natural, 
but  so  original  as  to  be  unlike  any  one  else,  hiding 
depth  of  delicate  thought  in  apparent  extravagances. 
Hamlet,  and  the  Georgics  of  Virgil,  he  used  to  say,  he 
should  have  bound  together."  "  Isaac  Williams,"  wrote 
Mr.  Copeland,  "  mentioned  to  me  a  remark  made  on 
Froude  by  S.  Wilberforce  in  his  early  days  :  '  They 
talk  of  Froude's  fun,  but  somehow  I  cannot  be  in  a 
room  with  him  alone  for  ten  minutes  without  feeling 
so  intensely  melancholy,  that  I  do  not  know  what  to  do 
with  myself.  At  Brightstone,  in  my  Eden  days,  he  was 
with  me,  and  I  was  overwhelmed  with  the  deep  sense 
which  possessed  him  of  yearning  which  nothing  could 
satisfy  and  of  the  unsatisfying  nature  of  all  things.'  ni 

Froude  often  reminds  us  of  Pascal.  Both  had  that 
peculiarly  bright,  brilliant,  sharp-cutting  intellect  which 
passes  with  ease  through  the  coverings  and  disguises 
which  veil  realities  from  men.  Both  had  mathematical 
powers  of  unusual  originality  and  clearness  ;  both  had 
the  same  imaginative  faculty ;  both  had  the  same  keen 
interest  in  practical  problems  of  science  ;  both  felt  and 
followed  the  attraction  of  deeper  and  more  awful 
interests.  Both  had  the  same  love  of  beauty ;  both 
suppressed  it.  Both  had  the  same  want  of  wide  or 
deep  learning ;  they  made  skilful  use  of  what  books 
came  to  their  hand,  and  used  their  reading  as  few 
readers  are  able  to  use  it ;  but  their  real  instrument  of 
work  was  their  own  quick  and  strong  insight,  and  power 
of  close  and  vigorous  reasoning.  Both  had  the  greatest 
contempt  for  fashionable  and  hollow  "  shadows  of 
religion."  Both  had  the  same  definite,  unflinching 

1  A  few  references   to  the   Remains      collections,  i.  7,  13,  18,  26,  106,  184, 
illustrating  this  are  subjoined  if  any  one      199,  200-204. 
cares  to  compare  them  with  these  re- 

E 


So  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

judgment.  Both  used  the  same  clear  and  direct  lan- 
guage. Both  had  a  certain  grim  delight  in  the  irony 
with  which  they  pursued  their  opponents.  In  both 
it  is  probable  that  their  unmeasured  and  unsparing 
criticism  recoiled  on  the  cause  which  they  had  at 
heart.  But  in  the  case  of  both  of  them  it  was  not  the 
temper  of  the  satirist,  it  was  no  mere  love  of  attack- 
ing what  was  vulnerable,  and  indulgence  in  the  cruel 
pleasure  of  stinging  and  putting  to  shame,  which  inspired 
them.  Their  souls  were  moved  by  the  dishonour 
done  to  religion,  by  public  evils  and  public  dangers. 
Both  of  them  died  young,  before  their  work  was  done. 
They  placed  before  themselves  the  loftiest  and  most 
unselfish  objects,  the  restoration  of  truth  and  goodness 
in  the  Church,  and  to  that  they  gave  their  life  and  all 
that  they  had.  And  what  they  called  on  others  to  be 
they  were  themselves.  They  were  alike  in  the  stern- 
ness, the  reality,  the  perseverance,  almost  unintelligible 
in  its  methods  to  ordinary  men,  of  their  moral  and 
spiritual  self-discipline. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  TO  CHAPTER  III1 

HURRELL  FROUDE  was,  when  I,  as  an  undergraduate, 
first  knew  him  in  1828,  tall  and  very  thin,  with  some- 
thing of  a  stoop,  with  a  large  skull  and  forehead,  but 
not  a  large  face,  delicate  features,  and  penetrating  gray 
eyes,  not  exactly  piercing,  but  bright  with  internal 
conceptions,  and  ready  to  assume  an  expression  of 

1  I  am  indebted  for  these  recollections  to  the  late  Lord  Blachford.     They 
were  written  in  Oct.  1884. 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  51 

amusement,  careful  attention,  inquiry,  or  stern  disgust, 
but  with  a  basis  of  softness.  His  manner  was  cordial 
and  familiar,  and  assured  you,  as  you  knew  him  well,  of 
his  affectionate  feeling,  which  encouraged  you  to  speak 
your  mind  (within  certain  limits),  subject  to  the  con- 
sideration that  if  you  said  anything  absurd  it  would 
not  be  allowed  to  fall  to  the  ground.  He  had  more  of 
the  undergraduate  in  him  than  any  "  don  "  whom  I  ever 
knew;  absolutely  unlike  Newman  in  being  always 
ready  to  skate,  sail,  or  ride  with  his  friends — and,  if  in 
a  scrape,  not  pharisaical  as  to  his  means  of  getting  out 
of  it.  I  remember,  e.g.,  climbing  Merton  gate  with 
him  in  my  undergraduate  days,  when  we  had  been  out 
too  late  boating  or  skating.  And  unless  authority  or 
substantial  decorum  was  really  threatened  he  was  very 
lenient — or  rather  had  an  amused  sympathy  with  the 
irregularities  that  are  mere  matters  of  mischief  or  high 
spirits.  In  lecture  it  was,  mutatis  mutandis,  the  same 
man.  Seeing,  from  his  Remains,  the  "  high  view  of  his 
own  capacities  of  which  he  could  not  divest  himself," 
and  his  determination  not  to  exhibit  or  be  puffed  up  by 
it,  and  looking  back  on  his  tutorial  manner  (I  was  in 
his  lectures  both  in  classics  and  mathematics),  it  was 
strange  how  he  disguised,  not  only  his  sense  of  superi- 
ority, but  the  appearance  of  it,  so  that  his  pupils  felt 
him  more  as  a  fellow-student  than  as  the  refined  scholar 
or  mathematician  which  he  was.  This  was  partly 
owing  to  his  carelessness  of  those  formulae,  the  famili- 
arity with  which  gives  even  second-rate  lecturers  a 
position  of  superiority  which  is  less  visible  in  those 
who,  like  their  pupils,  are  themselves  always  struggling 
with  principles — and  partly  to  an  effort,  perhaps  some- 
times overdone,  not  to  put  himself  above  the  level  of 
others.  In  a  lecture  on  the  Supplices  of  /Eschylus, 


52  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

I  have  heard  him  say  tout  bonnement,  "  I  can't  construe 
that — what  do  you  make  of  it,  A.  B.  ?  "  turning  to  the 
supposed  best  scholar  in  the  lecture ;  or,  when  an  ob- 
jection was  started  to  his  mode  of  getting  through  a 
difficulty,  "  Ah  !  I  had  not  thought  of  that — perhaps 
your  way  is  the  best."  And  this  mode  of  dealing  with 
himself  and  the  undergraduates  whom  he  liked,  made 
them  like  him,  but  also  made  them  really  undervalue 
his  talent,  which,  as  we  now  see,  was  what  he  meant 
they  should  do.  At  the  same  time,  though  watchful 
over  his  own  vanity,  he  was  keen  and  prompt  in  snubs 
—playful  and  challenging  retort — to  those  he  liked, 
but  in  the  nature  of  scornful  exposure,  when  he  had  to 
do  with  coarseness  or  coxcombry,  or  shallow  display 
of  sentiment.  It  was  a  paradoxical  consequence  of 
his  suppression  of  egotism  that  he  was  more  solicitous 
to  show  that  you  were  wrong  than  that  he  was  right. 

He  also  wanted,  like  Socrates  or  Bishop  Butler,  to 
make  others,  if  possible,  think  for  themselves. 

However,  it  is  not  to  be  inferred  that  his  conversa- 
tion was  made  of  controversy.  To  a  certain  extent  it 
turned  that  way,  because  he  was  fond  of  paradox. 
(His  brother  William  used  to  say  that  he,  William, 
never  felt  he  had  really  mastered  a  principle  till  he 
had  thrown  it  into  a  paradox.)  And  paradox,  of  course, 
invites  contradiction,  and  so  controversy.  On  subjects 
upon  which  he  considered  himself  more  or  less  an 
apostle,  he  liked  to  stir  people's  minds  by  what  startled 
them,  waking  them  up,  or  giving  them  "  nuts  to  crack." 
An  almost  solemn  gravity  with  amusement  twinkling 
behind  it — not  invisible — and  ready  to  burst  forth  into 
a  bright  low  laugh  when  gravity  had  been  played  out, 
was  a  very  frequent  posture  with  him. 

But  he  was  thoroughly  ready  to  amuse  and  instruct, 


in  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  53 

or  to  be  amused  and  instructed,  as  an  eager  and  earnest 
speaker  or  listener  on  most  matters  of  interest.  I  do 
not  remember  that  he  had  any  great  turn  for  beauty  of 
colour ;  he  had  none,  I  think,  or  next  to  none,  for 
music — nor  do  I  remember  in  him  any  great  love  of 
humour — but  for  beauty  of  physical  form,  for  mechanics, 
for  mathematics,  for  poetry  which  had  aj  root  in  true 
feeling,  for  wit  (including  that  perception  of  a  quasi- 
logical  absurdity  of  position),  for  history,  for  domestic 
incidents,  his  sympathy  was  always  lively,  and  he 
would  throw  himself  naturally  and  warmly  into  them. 
From  his  general  demeanour  (I  need  scarcely  say)  the 
"odour  of  sanctity"  was  wholly  absent.  I  am  not 
sure  that  his  height  and  depth  of  aim  and  lively 
versatility  of  talent  did  not  leave  his  compassionate 
sympathies  rather  undeveloped ;  certainly  to  himself, 
and,  I  suspect,  largely  in  the  case  of  others,  he  would 
view  suffering  not  as  a  thing  to  be  cockered  up  or 
made  much  of,  though  of  course  to  be  alleviated  if 
possible,  but  to  be  viewed  calmly  as  a  Providential 
discipline  for  those  who  can  mitigate,  or  have  to 
endure  it. 

J.  H.  N.  was  once  reading  me  a  letter  just  received 
from  him  in  which  (in  answer  to  J.  H.  N.'s  account  of 
his  work  and  the  possibility  of  his  breaking  down)  he 
said  in  substance  :  "  I  daresay  you  have  more  to  do 
than  your  health  will  bear,  but  I  would  not  have  you 
give  up  anything  except  perhaps  the  deanery "  (of 
Oriel).  And  then  J.  H.  N.  paused,  with  a  kind  of 
inner  exultant  chuckle,  and  said,  "Ah  !  there's  a  Basil 
for  you  " ;  as  if  the  friendship  which  sacrificed  its  friend, 
as  it  would  sacrifice  itself  to  a  cause,  was  the  friendship 
which  was  really  worth  having. 

As  I  came  to  know  him  in  a  more  manly  way,  as  a 


54  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

brother  Fellow,  friend,  and  collaborateur,  the  character 
of  "  ecclesiastical  agitator "  was  of  course  added  to  this. 

In  this  capacity  his  great  pleasure  was  taking 
bulls  by  their  horns.  Like  the  "gueux"  of  the  Low 
Countries,  he  would  have  met  half-way  any  oppro- 
brious nickname,  and  I  believe  coined  the  epithet 
"  apostolical "  for  his  party  because  it  was  connected 
with  everything  in  Spain  which  was  most  obnoxious 
to  the  British  public.  I  remember  one  day  his  griev- 
ously shocking  Palmer  of  Worcester,  a  man  of  an 
opposite  texture,  when  a  council  in  J.  H.  N.'s  rooms 
had  been  called  to  consider  some  memorial  or  other 
to  which  Palmer  wanted  to  collect  the  signatures  of 
many,  and  particularly  of  dignified  persons,  but  in 
which  Froude  wished  to  express  the  determined 
opinions  of  a  few.  Froude  stretched  out  his  long 
length  on  Newman's  sofa,  and  broke  in  upon  one  of 
Palmer's  judicious  harangues  about  Bishops  and  Arch- 
deacons and  such  like,  with  the  ejaculation,  "  I  don't 
see  why  we  should  disguise  from  ourselves  that  our 
object  is  to  dictate  to  the  clergy  of  this  country,  and  I, 
for  one,  do  not  want  any  one  else  to  get  on  the  box." 
He  thought  that  true  Churchmen  must  be  few  before 
they  were  many — that  the  sin  of  the  clergy  in  all  ages 
was  that  they  tried  to  make  out  that  Christians  were 
many  when  they  were  only  few,  and  sacrificed  to  this 
object  the  force  derivable  from  downright  and  unmis- 
takable enforcement  of  truth  in  speech  or  action. 

As  simplicity  in  thought,  word,  and  deed  formed 
no  small  part  of  his  ideal,  his  tastes  in  architecture, 
painting,  sculpture,  rhetoric,  or  poetry  were  severe. 
He  had  no  patience  with  what  was  artistically  dis- 
solute, luscious,  or  decorated  more  than  in  proportion 
to  its  animating  idea — wishy-washy  or  sentimental. 


ni  RICHARD  HURRELL  FROUDE  55 

The  ornamental  parts  of  his  own  rooms  (in  which  I 
lived  in  his  absence)  were  a  slab  of  marble  to  wash 
upon,  a  print  of  Rubens's  "  Deposition,"  and  a  head 
(life-size)  of  the  Apollo  Belvidere.  And  I  remember 
still  the  tall  scorn,  with  something  of  surprise,  with 
which,  on  entering  my  undergraduate  room,  he  looked 
down  on  some  Venuses,  Cupids,  and  Hebes,  which, 
freshman-like,  I  had  bought  from  an  Italian. 

He  was  not  very  easy  even  under  conventional 
vulgarity,  still  less  under  the  vulgarity  of  egotism  ; 
but,  being  essentially  a  partisan,  he  could  put  up  with 
both  in  a  man  who  was  really  in  earnest  and  on  the 
right  side.  Nothing,  however,  I  think,  would  have 
induced  him  to  tolerate  false  sentiment,  and  he  would, 
I  think,  if  he  had  lived,  have  exerted  himself  very 
trenchantly  to  prevent  his  cause  being  adulterated 
by  it. 

He  was,  I  should  say,  sometimes  misled  by  a 
theory  that  genius  cut  through  a  subject  by  logic  or 
intuition,  without  looking  to  the  right  or  left,  while 
common  sense  was  always  testing  every  step  by 
consideration  of  surroundings  (I  have  not  got  his 
terse  mode  of  statement),  and  that  genius  was  right, 
or  at  least  had  only  to  be  corrected  here  and  there  by 
common  sense.  This,  I  take  it,  would  hardly  have 
answered  if  his  trenchancy  had  not  been  in  practice 
corrected  by  J.  H.  N.'s  wider  political  circumspection. 

He  submitted,  I  suppose,  to  J.  H.  N.'s  axiom,  that 
if  the  movement  was  to  do  anything  it  must  become 
"  respectable  "  ;  but  it  was  against  his  nature. 

He  would  (as  we  see  in  the  Remains]  have  wished 
Ken  to  have  the  "courage  of  his  convictions"  by 
excommunicating  the  Jurors  in  William  Ill's  time, 
and  setting  up  a  little  Catholic  Church,  like  the 


56  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP.  HI 

Jansenists  in  Holland.  He  was  not  (as  has  been 
observed)  a  theologian,  but  he  was  as  jealous  for 
orthodoxy  as  if  he  were.  He  spoke  slightingly  of 
Heber  as  having  ignorantly  or  carelessly  communicated 
with  (?)  Monophysites.  But  he  probably  knew  no 
more  about  that  and  other  heresies  than  a  man  of 
active  and  penetrating  mind  would  derive  from  text- 
books. And  I  think  it  likely  enough — not  that  his 
reverence  for  the  Eucharist,  but  —  that  his  special 
attention  to  the  details  of  Eucharistic  doctrine  was 
due  to  the  consideration  that  it  was  the  foundation 
of  ecclesiastical  discipline  and  authority — matters  on 
which  his  mind  fastened  itself  with  enthusiasm. 


CHAPTER    IV 

MR.  NEWMAN'S  EARLY  FRIENDS — ISAAC  WILLIAMS 

IN  the  early  days  of  the  movement,  among  Mr. 
Newman's  greatest  friends,  and  much  in  his  con- 
fidence, were  two  Fellows  of  Trinity — a  college  which 
never  forgot  that  Newman  had  once  belonged  to  it, 
— Isaac  Williams  and  William  John  Copeland.  In 
mind  and  character  very  different,  they  were  close 
friends,  with  the  affection  which  was  characteristic  of 
those  days  ;  and  for  both  of  them  Mr.  Newman  "had 
the  love  which  passes  that  of  common  relation."1 
Isaac  Williams  was  born  among  the  mountains  of 
Wales,  and  had  the  true  poetic  gift,  though  his  power 
of  expression  was  often  not  equal  to  what  he  wanted 
to  say.  Copeland  was  a  Londoner,  bred  up  in  the 
strict  school  of  Churchmanship  represented  by  Mr. 
N orris  of  Hackney,  tempered  by  sympathies  with 
the  Non-jurors.  At  Oxford  he  lived,  along  with 
Isaac  Williams,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  movement, 
which  was  the  interest  of  his  life  ;  but  he  lived, 
self- forgetting  or  self-effacing,  a  wonderful  mixture 
of  tender  and  inexhaustible  sympathy,  and  of  quick 
and  keen  wit,  which  yet,  somehow  or  other,  in  that 
time  of  exasperation  and  bitterness,  made  him  few 

1  Mozley,  Reminiscences,  i.  18. 


58  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

enemies.  He  knew  more  than  most  men  of  the  goings 
on  of  the  movement,  and  he  ought  to  have  been  its 
chronicler.  But  he  was  fastidious  and  hard  to  satisfy, 
and  he  left  his  task  till  it  was  too  late. 

Isaac  Williams  was  born  in  Wales  in  1802,  a  year 
after  Newman,  ten  years  after  John  Keble.  His 
early  life  was  spent  in  London,  but  his  affection 
for  Wales  and  its  mountain  scenery  was  great  and 
undiminished  to  the  end  of  his  life.  At  Harrow, 
where  Henry  Drury  was  his  tutor,  he  made  his 
mark  by  his  mastery  of  Latin  composition  and  his 
devotion  to  Latin  language  and  literature.  "  I  was 
so  used  to  think  in  Latin  that  when  I  had  to  write 
an  English  theme,  which  was  but  seldom,  I  had  to 
translate  my  ideas,  which  ran  in  Latin,  into  English"  j1 
and  later  in  life  he  complained  of  the  Latin  current 
which  disturbed  him  when  he  had  to  write  English. 
He  was  also  a  great  cricketer ;  and  he  describes  him- 
self as  coming  up  to  Trinity,  where  he  soon  got  a 
scholarship,  an  ambitious  and  careless  youth,  who 
had  never  heard  a  word  about  Christianity,  and  to 
whom  religion,  its  aims  and  its  restraints,  were  a  mere 
name. 

This  was  changed  by  what,  in  the  language  of 
devotional  schools,  would  have  been  called  his  con- 
version. It  came  about,  as  men  speak,  as  the  result 
of  accidents  ;  but  the  whole  course  of  his  thoughts  and 
life  was  turned  into  a  channel  from  which  it  never- 
more diverged.  An  old  Welsh  clergyman  gave  the 
undergraduate  an  introduction  to  John  Keble,  who 
then  held  a  place  in  Oxford  almost  unique.  But  the 
Trinity  undergraduate  and  the  Oriel  don  saw  little  of 
one  another  till  Isaac  Williams  won  the  Latin  prize 

1  I.  Williams,  MS.  Memoir. 


IS  A  A  C  WILLIAMS  59 


poem,  Ars  Geologica.  Keble  then  called  on  Isaac 
Williams  and  offered  his  help  in  criticising  the  poem 
and  polishing  it  for  printing.  The  two  men  plainly 
took  to  one  another  at  first  sight ;  and  that  service 
was  followed  by  a  most  unexpected  invitation  on 
Keble's  part.  He  had  chanced  to  come  to  Williams's 
room,  and  on  Williams  saying  that  he  had  no  plan  of 
reading  for  the  approaching  vacation,  Keble  said,  "  I 
am  going  to  leave  Oxford  for  good.  Suppose  you 
come  and  read  with  me.  The  Provost  has  asked  me 
to  take  Wilberforce,  and  I  declined  ;  but  if  you  would 
come,  you  would  be  companions."  Keble  was  going 
down  to  Southrop,  a  little  curacy  near  his  father's ; 
there  Williams  joined  him,  with  two  more — Robert 
Wilberforce  and  R.  H.  Froude ;  and  there  the  Long 
Vacation  of  1823  was  spent,  and  Isaac  Williams's 
character  and  course  determined.  "  It  was  this  very 
trivial  accident,  this  short  walk  of  a  few  yards,  and  a 
few  words  spoken,  which  was  the  turning-point  of  my 
life.  If  a  merciful  God  had  miraculously  interposed  to 
arrest  my  course,  I  could  not  have  had  a  stronger 
assurance  of  His  presence  than  I  always  had  in  looking 
back  to  that  day."  It  determined  Isaac  Williams's 
character,  and  it  determined  for  good  and  all  his 
theological  position.  He  had  before  him  all  day  long 
in  John  Keble  a  spectacle  which  was  absolutely  new 
to  him.  Ambitious  as  a  rising  and  successful  scholar 
at  college,  he  saw  a  man,  looked  up  to  and  wondered  at 
by  every  one,  absolutely  without  pride  and  without 
ambition.  He  saw  the  most  distinguished  academic 
of  his  day,  to  whom  every  prospect  was  open,  retiring 
from  Oxford  in  the  height  of  his  fame  to  bury  himself 
with  a  few  hundreds  of  Gloucestershire  peasants  in  a 
miserable  curacy.  He  saw  this  man  caring  for  and 


60  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

respecting  the  ignorant  and  poor  as  much  as  others 
respected  the  great  and  the  learned.  He  saw  this 
man,  who  had  made  what  the  world  would  call  so 
great  a  sacrifice,  apparently  unconscious  that  he  had 
made  any  sacrifice  at  all,  gay,  unceremonious,  bright, 
full  of  play  as  a  boy,  ready  with  his  pupils  for  any  exer- 
cise, mental  or  muscular — for  a  hard  ride,  or  a  crabbed 
bit  of  ^schylus,  or  a  logic  fence  with  disputatious 
and  paradoxical  undergraduates,  giving  and  taking 
on  even  ground.  These  pupils  saw  one,  the  depth  of 
whose  religion  none  could  doubt,  "  always  endeavouring 
to  do  them  good  as  it  were  unknown  to  themselves 
and  in  secret,  and  ever  avoiding  that  his  kindness 
should  be  felt  and  acknowledged " ;  showing  in  the 
whole  course  of  daily  life  the  purity  of  Christian  love, 
and  taking  the  utmost  pains  to  make  no  profession  or 
show  of  it.  This  unostentatious  and  undemonstrative 
religion — so  frank,  so  generous  in  all  its  ways — was  to 
Isaac  Williams  "quite  a  new  world."  It  turned  his 
mind  in  upon  itself  in  the  deepest  reverence,  but  also 
with  something  of  morbid  despair  of  ever  reaching 
such  a  standard.  It  drove  all  dreams  of  ambition  out 
of  his  mind.  It  made  humility,  self-restraint,  self- 
abasement,  objects  of  unceasing,  possibly  not  always 
wise  and  healthy,  effort.  But  the  result  was  certainly 
a  character  of  great  sweetness,  tenderness,  and  lowly 
unselfishness,  pure,  free  from  all  worldliness,  and  deeply 
resigned  to  the  will  of  God.  He  caught  from  Mr. 
Keble,  like  Froude,  two  characteristic  habits  of  mind 
—a  strong  depreciation  of  mere  intellect  compared 
with  the  less  showy  excellences  of  faithfulness  to  con- 
science and  duty ;  and  a  horror  and  hatred  of  every- 
thing that  seemed  like  display  or  the  desire  of 
applause  or  of  immediate  effect.  Intellectual  deprecia- 


iv  ISAAC  WILLIAMS  61 

tors  of  intellect  may  deceive  themselves,  and  do  not 
always  escape  the  snare  which  they  fear ;  but  in  Isaac 
Williams  there  was  a  very  genuine  carrying  out  of  the 
Psalmist's  words  :  "  Surely  I  have  behaved  and  quieted 
myself;  I  refrain  my  soul  and  keep  it  low,  as  a  child 
that  is  weaned  from  his  mother."  This  fear  of  display 
in  a  man  of  singularly  delicate  and  fastidious  taste 
came  to  have  something  forced  and  morbid  in  it.  It 
seemed  sometimes  as  if  in  preaching  or  talking  he 
aimed  at  being  dull  and  clumsy.  But  in  all  that  he 
did  and  wrote  he  aimed  at  being  true  at  all  costs  and  in 
the  very  depths  of  his  heart ;  and  though,  in  his  words, 
we  may  wish  sometimes  for  what  we  should  feel  to  be 
more  natural  and  healthy  in  tone,  we  never  can  doubt 
that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  one  who  shrank  from 
all  conscious  unreality  like  poison. 

From  Keble,  or,  it  may  be  said,  from  the  Kebles, 
he  received  his  theology.  The  Kebles  were  all  of 
them  men  of  the  old-fashioned  High  Church  orthodoxy, 
of  the  Prayer  Book  and  the  Catechism — the  orthodoxy 
which  was  professed  at  Oxford,  which  was  represented 
in  London  by  Norris  of  Hackney  and  Joshua  Watson  ; 
which  valued  in  religion  sobriety,  reverence,  and 
deference  to  authority,  and  in  teaching,  sound  learning 
and  the  wisdom  of  the  great  English  divines  ;  which 
vehemently  disliked  the  Evangelicals  and  Methodists 
for  their  poor  and  loose  theology,  their  love  of  excite- 
ment and  display,  their  hunting  after  popularity.  This 
Church  of  England  divinity  was  the  theology  of  the 
old  Vicar  of  Coin  St.  Aldwyn's,  a  good  scholar  and  a 
good  parish  priest,  who  had  brought  up  his  two  sons 
at  home  to  be  scholars ;  and  had  impressed  his 
solid  and  manly  theology  on  them  so  strongly  that 
amid  all  changes  they  remained  at  bottom  true  to  their 


62  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

paternal  training.  John  Keble  added  to  it  great 
attainments  and  brilliant  gifts  of  imagination  and 
poetry ;  but  he  never  lost  the  plain,  downright,  almost 
awkward  ways  of  conversation  and  manner  of  his 
simple  home  —  ways  which  might  have  seemed 
abrupt  and  rough  but  for  the  singular  sweetness  and 
charm  of  his  nature.  To  those  who  looked  on  the 
outside  he  was  always  the  homely,  rigidly  orthodox 
country  clergyman.  On  Isaac  Williams,  with  his 
ethical  standard,  John  Keble  also  impressed  his  ideas 
of  religious  truth  ;  he  made  him  an  old-fashioned  High 
Churchman,  suspicious  of  excitement  and  "effect,"  sus- 
picious of  the  loud-talking  religious  world,  suspicious 
of  its  novelties  and  shallowness,  and  clinging  with  his 
whole  soul  to  ancient  ways  and  sound  Church  of 
England  doctrine  reflected  in  the  Prayer  Book.  And 
from  John  Keble's  influence  he  passed  under  the 
influence  of  Thomas  Keble,  the  Vicar  of  Bisley,  a 
man  of  sterner  type  than  his  brother,  with  strong  and 
definite  opinions  on  all  subjects ;  curt  and  keen  in 
speech ;  intolerant  of  all  that  seemed  to  threaten 
wholesome  teaching  and  the  interests  of  the  Church  ; 
and  equally  straightforward,  equally  simple,  in  manners 
and  life.  Under  him  Isaac  Williams  began  his  career 
as  a  clergyman ;  he  spent  two  years  of  solitary  and 
monotonous  life  in  a  small  cure,  seeking  comfort  from 
solitude  in  poetical  composition  ("  It  was  very  calm 
and  subduing,"  he  writes)  ;  and  then  he  was  recalled  to 
Oxford  as  Fellow  and  Tutor  of  his  college,  to  meet  a 
new  and  stronger  influence,  which  it  was  part  of  the 
work  and  trial  of  the  rest  of  his  life  both  to  assimilate 
and  to  resist. 

For,    with    Newman,    with    whom    he    now   came 
into   contact,    he   did    both.     There   opened    to   him 


ISAAC  WILLIAMS  63 


from    intercourse    with    Newman    a    new    world    of 
thought ;    and   yet   while   feeling    and    answering   to 
its  charm,  he  never  was  quite  at  ease  with  him.     But 
Williams  and  Froude  had  always  been  great  friends 
since  the  reading  party  of  1823,  in  spite  of  Froude's 
audacities.     Froude  was  now  residing  in  Oxford,  and 
had  become  Newman's  most  intimate  friend,  and  he 
brought  Newman  and  Williams  together.     "  Living  at 
that  time,"  he  says,  "so  much  with  Froude,  I  was  now 
in  consequence  for  the  first  time  brought  into  inter- 
course with  Newman.     We  almost  daily  walked  and 
often  dined   together."      Newman    and    Froude   had 
ceased  to  be  tutors ;  their  thoughts  were  turned  to 
theology  and  the  condition  of  the  Church.     Newman 
had  definitely  broken  with  the  Evangelicals,  to  whom 
he    had    been    supposed    to    belong,    and   Whately's 
influence  over  him  was  waning,  and  with  Froude  he 
looked  up  to  Keble  as  the  pattern  of  religious  wisdom. 
He  had  accepted  the  position  of  a  Churchman  as  it 
was  understood  by  Keble  and  Froude ;  and  thus  there 
was  nothing  to  hinder  Williams's  full  sympathy  with 
him.     But  from  the  first  there  seems  to  have  been  an 
almost  impalpable   bar  between  them,   which    is   the 
more  remarkable  because   Williams  appears   to  have 
seen  with  equanimity  Froude's  apparently  more  violent 
and  dangerous  outbreaks   of  paradox  and  antipathy. 
Possibly,  after  the  catastrophe,  he  may,  in  looking  back, 
have  exaggerated  his  early  alarms.     But  from  the  first 
he  says  he  saw  in  Newman  what  he  had  learned  to 
look  upon  as  the  gravest  of  dangers — the  preponder- 
ance of  intellect  among  the  elements  of  character  and 
as  the  guide  of  life.     "  I   was  greatly  delighted  and 
charmed  with  Newman,  who  was  extremely  kind  to 
me,   but  did   not  altogether  trust  his  opinions ;    and 


64  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

though  Froude  was  in  the  habit  of  stating  things  in  an 
extreme  and  paradoxical  manner,  yet  one  always  felt 
conscious  of  a  ground  of  entire  confidence  and  agree- 
ment ;  but  it  was  not  so  with  Newman,  even  though 
one  appeared  more  in  unison  with  his  more  moderate 
views." 

But,  in  spite  of  all  this,  Newman  offered  and  Isaac 
Williams  accepted  the  curacy  of  St.  Mary's.  "Things 
at  Oxford  [1830-32]  at  that  time  were  very  dull." 
"  Froude  and  I  seemed  entirely  alone,  with  Newman 
only  secretly,  as  it  were,  beginning  to  sympathise.  I 
became  at  once  very  much  attached  to  Newman,  won 
by  his  kindness  and  delighted  by  his  good  and 
wonderful  qualities  ;  and  he  proposed  that  I  should 
be  his  curate  at  St.  Mary's.  ...  I  can  remember  a 
strong  feeling  of  difference  I  first  felt  on  acting  to- 
gether with  him  from  what  I  had  been  accustomed  to  : 

o 

that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  looking  for  effect,  and  for 
what  was  sensibly  effective,  which  from  the  Bisley 
and  Fairford  School  I  had  been  long  habituated  to 
avoid ;  but  to  do  one's  duty  in  faith  and  leave  it  to 
God,  and  that  all  the  more  earnestly,  because  there 
were  no  sympathies  from  without  to  answer.  There 
was  a  felt  but  unexpressed  difference  of  this  kind,  but 
perhaps  it  became  afterwards  harmonised  as  we  acted 
together." l 

Thus  early,  among  those  most  closely  united,  there 
appeared  the  beginnings  of  those  different  currents 
which  became  so  divergent  as  time  went  on.  Isaac 
Williams,  dear  as  he  was  to  Newman,  and  returning  to 
the  full  Newman's  affection,  yet  represented  from  the 
first  the  views  of  what  Williams  spoke  of  as  the  "  Bisley 
and  Fairford  School,"  which,  though  sympathising  and 

1  I.  Williams,  MS.  Memoir. 


iv  ISAAC  WILLIAMS  65 

co-operating  with  the  movement,  was  never  quite  easy 
about  it,  and  was  not  sparing  of  its  criticism  on  the 
stir  and  agitation  of  the  Tracts. 

Isaac  Williams  threw  himself  heartily  into  the 
early  stages  of  the  movement ;  in  his  poetry  into  its 
imaginative  and  poetical  side,  and  also  into  its  practical 
and  self-denying  side.  But  he  would  have  been  quite 
content  with  its  silent  working,  and  its  apparent  want 
of  visible  success.  He  would  have  been  quite  content 
with  preaching  simple  homely  sermons  on  the  obvious 
but  hard  duties  of  daily  life,  and  not  seeing  much 
come  of  them  ;  with  finding  a  slow  abatement  of  the 
self-indulgent  habits  of  university  life,  with  keeping 
Fridays,  with  less  wine  in  common  room.  The  Bisley 
maxims  bade  men  to  be  very  stiff  and  uncompromising 
in  their  witness  and  in  their  duties,  but  to  make  no 
show  and  expect  no  recognition  or  immediate  fruit, 
and  to  be  silent  under  misconstruction.  But  his 
was  not  a  mind  which  realised  great  possibilities  of 
change  in  the  inherited  ways  of  the  English  Church. 
The  spirit  of  change,  so  keenly  discerned  by  Newman, 
as  being  both  certain  and  capable  of  being  turned  to 
good  account  as  well  as  bad,  to  him  was  unintelligible 
or  bad.  More  reality,  more  severity  and  consistency, 
deeper  habits  of  self-discipline  on  the  accepted  lines 
of  English  Church  orthodoxy,  would  have  satisfied 
him  as  the  aim  of  the  movement,  as  it  undoubtedly 
was  a  lar^e  part  of  its  aim  ;  though  with  Froude  and 
Newman  it  also  aimed  at  a  widening  of  ideas,  of 
interests  and  sympathies,  beyond  what  had  been 
common  in  the  English  Church. 

In  the  history  of  the  movement  Isaac  Williams 
took  a  forward  part  in  two  of  its  events,  with  one  of 
which  his  connexion  was  most  natural,  with  the  other 

F 


66  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

grotesquely  and  ludicrously  incongruous.  The  one 
was  the  plan  and  starting  of  the  series  of  Plain 
Sermons  in  1839,  to  which  not  only  the  Kebles, 
Williams,  and  Copeland  contributed  their  volumes, 
but  also  Newman  and  Dr.  Pusey.  Isaac  Williams  has 
left  the  following  account  of  his  share  in  the  work. 

"It  seemed  at  this  time  (about  1838-39)  as  if 
Oxford,  from  the  strength  of  principle  shown  there 
(and  an  almost  unanimous  and  concentrated  energy), 
was  becoming  a  rallying  point  for  the  whole  kingdom  : 
but  I  watched  from  the  beginning  and  saw  greater 
dangers  among  ourselves  than  those  from  without ; 
which  I  endeavoured  to  obviate  by  publishing  the 
Plain  Sermons.  [Plain  Sermons,  by  contributors  to 
the  Tracts  for  the  Times,  ist  Series,  January  1839.] 
I  attempted  in  vain  to  get  the  Kebles  to  publish,  in 
order  to  keep  pace  with  Newman,  and  so  maintain  a 
more  practical  turn  in  the  movement.  I  remember 
C.  Cornish  (C.  L.Cornish,  Fellow  and  Tutor  of  Exeter) 
coming  to  me  and  saying  as  we  walked  in  Trinity 
Gardens,  '  People  are  a  little  afraid  of  being  carried 
away  by  Newman's  brilliancy  ;  they  want  more  of  the 
steady  sobriety  of  the  Kebles  infused  into  the  move- 
ment to  keep  us  safe ;  we  have  so  much  sail  and 
want  ballast.'  And  the  effect  of  the  publication  of 
the  Plain  Sermons  was  at  the  time  very  quieting. 
In  first  undertaking  the  Plain  Sermons,  I  had  no 
encouragement  from  any  one,  not  even  from  John 
Keble  ;  acquiescence  was  all  that  I  could  gain.  But 
I  have  heard  J.  K.  mention  a  saying  of  Judge 
Coleridge,  long  before  the  Tracts  were  thought 
of:  'If  you  want  to  propagate  your  opinions  you 
should  lend  your  sermons ;  the  clergy  would  then 
preach  them,  and  adopt  your  opinions.'  Now  this 


iv  ISAAC  WILLIAMS  67 

has  been    the  effect   of  the  publication  of  the  Plain 
Sermons" 

Isaac  Williams,  if  any  man,  represented  in  the  move- 
ment the  moderate  and  unobtrusive  way  of  religious 
teaching.  But  it  was  his  curious  fate  to  be  dragged 
into  the  front  ranks  of  the  fray,  and  to  be  singled  out 
as  almost  the  most  wicked  and  dangerous  of  the 
Tractarians.  He  had  the  strange  fortune  to  produce 
the  first  of  the  Tracts  *  which  was  by  itself  held  up  to 
popular  indignation  as  embodying  all  the  mischief  of 
the  series  and  the  secret  aims  of  the  movement.  The 
Tract  had  another  effect.  It  made  Williams  the  object 
of  the  first  great  Tractarian  battle  in  the  University, 
the  contest  for  the  Poetry  Professorship :  the  first 
decisive  and  open  trial  of  strength,  and  the  first  Tract- 
arian defeat.  The  contest,  even  more  than  the  result, 
distressed  him  greatly ;  and  the  course  of  things  in  the 
movement  itself  aggravated  his  distress.  His  general 
distrust  of  intellectual  restlessness  had  now  passed 
into  the  special  and  too  well  grounded  fear  that  the 
movement,  in  some  of  its  most  prominent  represent- 
atives, was  going  definitely  in  the  direction  of  Rome. 
A  new  generation  was  rising  into  influence,  to  whom 
the  old  Church  watchwords  and  maxims,  the  old 
Church  habits  of  mind,  the  old  Church  convictions 
had  completely  lost  their  force,  and  were  become 
almost  objects  of  dislike  and  scorn ;  and  for  this 
change  Newman's  approval  and  countenance  was 
freely  and  not  very  scrupulously  quoted.  Williams's 
relation  to  him  had  long  been  a  curious  mixture  of 
the  most  affectionate  attachment  and  intimacy  with 
growing  distrust  and  sense  of  divergence.  Newman 

1  The  history  of  this  famous  Tract,      Religious  Knowledge,  belongs  to  a  later 
No.  80,  on  Reserve  in  communicating      stage  of  the  movement. 


68  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHA 

was  now  giving  more  and  more  distinct  warning  that 
he  was  likely  to  go  where  Williams  could  not  follow 
him,  and  the  pain  on  both  sides  was  growing.  But 
things  moved  fast,  and  at  length  the  strain  broke. 

The  estrangement  was  inevitable ;  but  both  cher- 
ished the  warmest  feelings  of  affection,  even  though 
such  a  friendship  had  been  broken.  But  Oxford 
became  distasteful  to  Williams,  and  he  soon  afterwards 
left  it  for  Bisley  and  Stinchcombe,  the  living  of  his 
brother-in-law,  Sir  G.  Prevost.  There  he  married 
(22d  June  1842),  and  spent  the  remainder  of  his  life 
devoting  himself  to  the  preparation  of  those  devotional 
commentaries,  which  are  still  so  well  known.  He 
suffered  for  the  greatest  part  of  his  life  from  a  dis- 
tressing and  disabling  chronic  asthma — from  the  time 
that  he  came  back  to  Oxford  as  Fellow  and  Tutor — 
and  he  died  in  1865.  The  old  friends  met  once  more 
shortly  before  Isaac  Williams's  death ;  Newman  came 
to  see  him,  and  at  his  departure  Williams  accompanied 
him  to  the  station. 

Isaac  Williams  wrote  a  great  deal  of  poetry,  first 
during  his  solitary  curacy  at  Windrush,  and  afterwards 
at  Oxford.  It  was  in  a  lower  and  sadder  key  than 
the  Christian  Year,  which  no  doubt  first  inspired  it ; 
it  wanted  the  elasticity  and  freshness  and  variety  of 
Keble's  verse,  and  it  was  often  careless  in  structure 
and  wanting  in  concentration.  But  it  was  the  out- 
pouring of  a  very  beautiful  mind,  deeply  impressed 
with  the  realities  of  failure  in  the  Church  and  religion, 
as  well  as  in  human  life,  full  of  tenderness  and  pathetic 
sweetness,  and  seeking  a  vent  for  its  feelings,  and 
relief  for  its  trouble,  in  calling  up  before  itself  the 
images  of  God's  goodness  and  kingdom  of  which 
nature  and  the  world  are  full.  His  poetry  is  a  witness 


ISAAC  WILLIAMS  69 


to  the  depth  and  earnestness  and  genuine  delicacy  of 
what  seemed  hard  and  narrow  in  the  Bisley  School ; 
there  are  passages  in  it  which  are  not  easily  forgotten ; 
but  it  was  not  strong  enough  to  arrest  the  excitement 
which  soon  set  in,  and  with  its  continual  obscurity 
and  its  want  of  finish  it  never  had  the  recognition 
really  due  to  its  excellence.  Newman  thought  it  too 
soft.  It  certainly  wanted  the  fire  and  boldness  and 
directness  which  he  threw  into  his  own  verse  when  he 
wrote  ;  but  serious  earnestness  and  severity  of  tone 
it  certainly  did  not  want. 


CHAPTER    V 

CHARLES    MARRIOTT 

CHARLES  MARRIOTT  was  a  man  who  was  drawn  into  the 
movement,  almost  in  spite  of  himself,  by  the  attraction 
of  the  character  of  the  leaders,  the  greatness  of  its 
object,  and  the  purity  and  nobleness  of  the  motives 
which  prompted  it.  He  was  naturally  a  man  of 
metaphysical  mind,  given  almost  from  a  child  to 
abstract  and  indeed  abstruse  thought.1  He  had  been 
a  student  of  S.  T.  Coleridge,  whom  the  Oriel  men  dis- 
liked as  a  misty  thinker.  He  used  to  discuss  Coleridge 
with  a  man  little  known  then,  but  who  gained  a  high 
reputation  on  the  Continent  as  a  first-rate  Greek 
scholar,  and  became  afterwards  the  head  of  the 
University  of  Melbourne,  Charles  Badham.  Marriott 
also  appreciated  Hampden  as  a  philosopher,  whom  the 
Oriel  men  thoroughly  distrusted  as  a  theologian.  He 
might  easily  under  different  conditions  have  become 
a  divine  of  the  type  of  F.  D.  Maurice.  He  was  by 
disposition  averse  to  anything  like  party,  and  the 
rough  and  sharp  proceedings  which  party  action  some- 
times seems  to  make  natural.  His  temper  was 
eminently  sober,  cautious  and  conciliatory  in  his  way 

1  "  He  told  me,"  writes  a  relative,  used  to  ponder  how  it  could  be  right 
"that  questions  about  trade  used  to  to  sell  things  for  more  than  they  cost 
occupy  him  very  early  in  life.  He  you." 


CHAP,  v  CHARLES  MARRIOTT  71 

of  looking  at  important  questions.  He  was  a  man 
with  many  friends  of  different  sorts  and  ways,  and  of 
boundless  though  undemonstrative  sympathy.  His 
original  tendencies  would  have  made  him  an  eclectic, 
recognising  the  strength  of  position  in  opposing 
schools  or  theories,  and  welcoming  all  that  was  good 
and  high  in  them.  He  was  profoundly  and  devotedly 
religious,  without  show,  without  extravagance.  His 
father,  who  died  when  he  was  only  fourteen,  had  been 
a  distinguished  man  in  his  time.  He  was  a  Christ 
Church  man,  and  one  of  two  in  the  first  of  the  Oxford 
Honour  lists  in  1802,  with  E.  Copleston,  H.  Phillpotts, 
and  S.  P.  Rigaud  for  his  examiners.  He  was  after- 
wards tutor  to  the  Earl  of  Dalkeith,  and  he  became 
the  friend  of  Walter  Scott,  who  dedicated  to  him  the 
Second  Canto  of  Marmion ;  and  having  ready  and 
graceful  poetical  talent,  he  contributed  several  ballads 
to  the  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border,  The  Feast  of 
Spurs,  and  Archie  Armstrong s  Aith.  He  was  a  good 
preacher;  his  sympathies — of  friendship,  perhaps, 
rather  than  of  definite  opinion — were  with  men  like 
Mr.  John  Bowdler  and  the  Thorntons.  While  he  lived 
he  taught  Charles  Marriott  himself.  After  his  death, 
Charles,  a  studious  boy,  with  ways  of  his  own  of 
learning,  and  though  successful  and  sure  in  his  work, 
very  slow  in  the  process  of  doing  it,  after  a  short  and 
discouraging  experiment  at  Rugby,  went  to  read  with 
a  private  tutor  till  he  went  to  Oxford.  He  was  first 
at  Exeter,  and  then  gained  a  scholarship  at  Balliol. 
He  gained  a  Classical  First  Class  and  a  Mathematical 
Second  in  the  Michaelmas  Term  of  1832,  and  the 
following  Easter  he  was  elected  Fellow  at  Oriel. 

For   a    man  of    his    power    and    attainments    he 
was  as  a  speaker,   and   in   conversation,   surprisingly 


72  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

awkward.  He  had  a  sturdy,  penetrating,  tenacious, 
but  embarrassed  intellect — embarrassed,  at  least,  by 
the  crowd  and  range  of  jostling  thoughts,  in  its  out- 
ward processes  and  manifestations,  for  he  thoroughly 
trusted  its  inner  workings,  and  was  confident  of  the 
accuracy  of  the  results,  even  when  helplessly  unable  to 
justify  them  at  the  moment.1  In  matters  of  business 
he  seemed  at  first  sight  utterly  unpractical.  In  dis- 
cussing with  keen,  rapid,  and  experienced  men  like 
the  Provost,  the  value  of  leases,  or  some  question  of 
the  management  of  College  property,  Marriott,  who 
always  took  great  interest  in  such  inquiries,  frequently 
maintained  some  position  which  to  the  quicker  wits 
round  him  seemed  a  paradox  or  a  mare's  nest.  Yet 
it  often  happened  that  after  a  dispute,  carried  on 
with  a  brisk  fire  of  not  always  respectful  objections 
to  Marriott's  view,  and  in  which  his  only  advantage 
was  the  patience  with  which  he  clumsily,  yet  surely, 
brought  out  the  real  point  of  the  matter,  overlooked 
by  others,  the  debate  ended  in  the  recognition 
that  he  had  been  right.  It  was  often  a  strange  and 
almost  distressing  sight  to  see  the  difficulty  under  which 
he  sometimes  laboured  of  communicating  his  thoughts, 
as  a  speaker  at  a  meeting,  or  as  a  teacher  to  his  hearers, 
or  even  in  the  easiness  of  familiar  talk.  The  comfort 
was  that  he  was  not  really  discouraged.  He  was 
wrestling  with  his  own  refractory  faculty  of  exposition 
and  speech ;  it  may  be,  he  was  busy  deeper  down 
in  the  recesses  and  storehouses  of  his  mind ;  but  he 
was  too  much  taken  up  with  the  effort  to  notice  what 
people  thought  of  it,  or  even  if  they  smiled ;  and  what 


1  "  He  had  his  own  way  of  doing      that  he  should  do  it  in  any  other."— 
everything,  and  used   most    stoutly  to      MS.    Memoir   by    his    brother,    John 
protest    that    it  was   quite    impossible      Marriott. 


v  CHARLES  MARRIOTT  73 

he  had  to  say  was  so  genuine  and  veracious,  as  an 
expression  of  his  meaning,  so  full  of  benevolence, 
charity,  and  generosity,  and  often  so  weighty  and 
unexpected,  that  men  felt  it  a  shame  to  think  much  of 
the  peculiarities  of  his  long  look  of  blank  silence,  and 
the  odd,  clumsy  explanations  which  followed  it.  He 
was  a  man,  under  an  uncouth  exterior,  of  the  noblest 
and  most  affectionate  nature ;  most  patient,  indulgent, 
and  hopeful  to  all  in  whom  he  took  an  interest,  even 
when  they  sorely  tried  his  kindness  and  his  faith  in 
them.  Where  he  loved  and  trusted  and  admired,  he 
was  apt  to  rate  very  highly,  sometimes  too  highly. 
His  gratitude  was  boundless.  He  was  one  of  those 
who  deliberately  gave  up  the  prospect  of  domestic  life, 
to  which  he  was  naturally  drawn,  for  the  sake  of  his 
cause.  Capable  of  abstract  thought  beyond  most  men 
of  his  time,  and  never  unwilling  to  share  his  thoughts 
with  those  at  all  disposed  to  venture  with  him  into 
deep  waters,  he  was  always  ready  to  converse  or  to 
discuss  on  much  more  ordinary  ground.  As  an  under- 
graduate and  a  young  bachelor,  he  had  attained, 
without  seeking  it,  a  position  of  almost  unexampled 
authority  in  the  junior  University  world  that  was 
hardly  reached  by  any  one  for  many  years  at  least 
after  him.  He  was  hopeless  as  a  speaker  in  the 
Union  ;  but  with  all  his  halting  and  bungling  speeches, 
that  democratic  and  sometimes  noisy  assembly  bore 
from  him  with  kindly  amusement  and  real  respect 
what  they  would  bear  from  no  one  else,  and  he  had  an 
influence  in  its  sometimes  turbulent  debates  which 
seems  unaccountable.  He  was  the  vir  pietate  gravis. 
In  a  once  popular  squib,  occasioned  by  one  of  the 
fiercest  of  these  debates,  this  unique  position  is  noticed 
and  commemorated — 


74  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

OuS'  (XaBcv  Ma/Homx,  (^lAaiTarov  ' 


f-ya  ypu>vu)v,  Macrt^ois  KCU  Trcur'  a 
Kat  oyAetAwv,  Trpocre^rj  Travras  KeivSots  eTre 


His  ways  and  his  talk  were  such  as  to  call  forth 
not  unfrequent  mirth  among  those  who  most  revered 
him.  He  would  meet  you  and  look  you  in  the  face 
without  speaking  a  word.  He  was  not  without 
humour  ;  but  his  jokes,  carried  off  by  a  little  laugh  of 
his  own,  were  apt  to  be  recondite  in  their  meaning 
and  allusions.  With  his  great  power  of  sympathy,  he 
yet  did  not  easily  divine  other  men's  lighter  or  subtler 
moods,  and  odd  and  sometimes  even  distressing  mis- 
takes were  the  consequence.  His  health  was  weak, 
and  a  chronic  tenderness  of  throat  and  chest  made  him 
take  precautions  which  sometimes  seemed  whimsical  ; 
and  his  well-known  figure  in  a  black  cloak,  with  a 
black  veil  over  his  college  cap,  and  a  black  comforter 
round  his  neck,  which  at  one  time  in  Oxford  acquired 
his  name,  sometimes  startled  little  boys  and  sleepy 
college  porters  when  he  came  on  them  suddenly  at 
night. 

With  more  power  than  most  men  of  standing 
alone,  and  of  arranging  his  observations  on  life  and 
the  world  in  ways  of  his  own,  he  had  pre-eminently 
above  all  men  round  him,  in  the  highest  and  noblest 
form,  the  spirit  of  a  disciple.  Like  most  human 
things,  discipleship  has  its  good  and  its  evil,  its  strong 
and  its  poor  and  dangerous  side  ;  but  it  really  has, 
what  is  much  forgotten  now,  a  good  and  a  strong  side. 
Both  in  philosophy  and  religion,  the  /za^r?)?  is  a 
distinct  character,  and  Charles  Marriott  was  an  ex- 
ample of  it  at  its  best.  He  had  its  manly  and 
reasonable  humility,  its  generous  trustfulness,  its 

1   Uniomachia,  1833. 


v  CHARLES  MARRIOTT  75 

self-forgetfulness ;  he  had,  too,  the  enthusiasm  of 
having  and  recognising  a  great  master  and  teacher, 
and  doing  what  he  wanted  done ;  and  he  learned  from 
the  love  of  his  master  to  love  what  he  believed  truth 
still  more.  The  character  of  the  disciple  does  not 
save  a  man  from  difficulties,  from  trouble  and  per- 
plexity ;  but  it  tends  to  save  him  from  idols  of  his 
own  making.  It  is  something,  in  the  trials  of  life  and 
faith,  to  have  the  consciousness  of  knowing  or  having 
known  some  one  greater  and  better  and  wiser  than 
oneself,  of  having  felt  the  spell  of  his  guidance  and 
example.  Marriott's  mind,  quick  to  see  what  was  real 
and  strong,  and  at  once  reverent  to  it  as  soon  as 
he  saw  it,  came  very  much,  as  an  undergraduate  at 
Balliol,  under  the  influence  of  a  very  able  and  brilliant 
tutor,  Moberly,  afterwards  Headmaster  of  Winchester 
and  Bishop  of  Salisbury ;  and  to  the  last  his  deference 
and  affection  to  his  old  tutor  remained  unimpaired. 
But  he  came  under  a  still  more  potent  charm  when 
he  moved  to  Oriel,  and  became  the  friend  of  Mr. 
Newman.  Master  and  disciple  were  as  unlike  as 
any  two  men  could  be ;  they  were  united  by  their 
sympathy  in  the  great  crisis  round  them,  by  their 
absorbing  devotion  to  the  cause  of  true  religion. 
Marriott  brought  to  the  movement,  and  especially  to 
its  chief,  a  great  University  character,  and  an  un- 
swerving and  touching  fidelity.  He  placed  himself, 
his  life,  and  all  that  he  could  do,  at  the  service  of  the 
great  effort  to  elevate  and  animate  the  Church  ;  to  the 
last  he  would  gladly  have  done  so  under  him  whom 
he  first  acknowledged  as  his  master.  This  was  not 
to  be ;  and  he  transferred  his  allegiance,  as  unre- 
servedly, with  equal  loyalty  and  self-sacrifice,  to  his 
successor.  But  to  the  end,  while  his  powers  lasted, 


76  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

with  all  his  great  gifts  and  attainments,  with  every 
temptation  to  an  independent  position  and  self-chosen 
employment,  he  continued  a  disciple.  He  believed  in 
men  wiser  than  himself;  he  occupied  himself  with 
what  they  thought  best  for  him  to  do. 

This  work  was,  for  the  most  part,  in  what  was 
done  to  raise  the  standard  of  knowledge  of  early 
Christian  literature,  and  to  make  that  knowledge 
accurate  and  scholarlike.  He  was,  for  a  time,  the 
Principal  of  the  Theological  College  at  Chichester, 
under  Bishop  Otter.  He  was  also  for  a  time  Tutor 
at  Oriel,  and  later,  Vicar  of  St.  Mary's.  He  was  long 
bent  on  setting  on  foot  some  kind  of  Hall  for  poor 
students ;  and  he  took  over  from  Mr.  Newman  the 
buildings  at  Littlemore,  which  he  turned  into  a  place 
for  printing  religious  works.  But  though  he  was 
connected  more  or  less  closely  with  numberless 
schemes  of  Christian  work  in  Oxford  and  out  of  it, 
his  special  work  was  that  of  a  theological  student. 
Marriott  had  much  to  do  with  the  Library  of  the 
Fathers,  with  correcting  translations,  collating  manu- 
scripts, editing  texts.1  Somehow,  the  most  interesting 
portions  hardly  came  to  his  share ;  and  what  he  did 
in  the  way  of  original  writing,  little  as  it  was,  causes 
regret  that  so  much  of  his  time  was  spent  on  the 
drudgery  of  editing.  Some  sermons,  a  little  volume 
of  Thoughts  on  Private  Devotion,  and  another  on  the 

1  "  This  became  the  main  task  of  and  wherever  he  was — on  a  journey, 

his  life  as  long  as  health  was  continued  after  dinner — even  in  a  boat,  he  would 

to  him.     All  who  knew  him  well  will  pull  out  a  sheet  and  go  to  write  upon 

remember  how  laboriously  he  worked  it   in  haste  to  get   it   finished  for   the 

at  it,  and  how,  in  one  shape  or  another,  next  post.      The  number   of  volumes 

it  was  always  on  hand.      Either  he  was  in  the  Library   of  the   Fathers  which 

translating,   or  correcting  the  transla-  bear    the    signature    C.    M.    attest  his 

tion   of  others;    or  he    was    collating  diligence." — John   Marriott's   Memoir 

MSS.,  or  correcting  the  press.      This  of  him  (MS.) 
last  work  was  carried  on  at  all  times 


v  CHARLES  MARRIOTT  77 

Epistle  to  the  Romans,  are  nearly  all  that  he  has  left 
of  his  own.  Novelty  of  manner  or  thought  in  them 
there  is  none,  still  less  anything  brilliant  or  sharp  in 
observation  or  style  ;  but  there  is  an  undefinable  sense, 
in  their  calm,  severe  pages,  of  a  deep  and  serious 
mind  dwelling  on  deep  and  very  serious  things.  It  is 
impossible  not  to  wish  that  a  man  who  could  so  write 
and  impress  people  might  have  had  the  leisure  to 
write  more. 

But  Marriott  never  had  any  leisure.  It  has  been 
said  above  that  he  placed  himself  at  the  service  of 
those  whom  he  counted  his  teachers.  But  the  truth 
is  that  he  was  at  every  one's  service  who  wanted  or 
who  asked  his  help.  He  had  a  large,  and  what  must 
have  been  often  a  burdensome,  correspondence.  With 
pupils  or  friends  he  was  always  ready  for  some  extra 
bit  of  reading.  To  strangers  he  was  always  ready 
to  show  attention  and  hospitality,  though  Marriott's 
parties  were  as  quaint  as  himself.  His  breakfast 
parties  in  his  own  room  were  things  to  have  seen — 
a  crowd  of  undergraduates,  finding  their  way  with 
difficulty  amid  lanes  and  piles  of  books,  amid  a  scarcity 
of  chairs  and  room,  and  the  host,  perfectly  unconscious 
of  anything  grotesque,  sitting  silent  during  the  whole  of 
the  meal,  but  perfectly  happy,  at  the  head  of  the  table. 
But  there  was  no  claimant  on  his  purse  or  his  interest 
who  was  too  strange  for  his  sympathy — raw  freshmen, 
bores  of  every  kind,  broken-down  tradesmen,  old 
women,  distressed  foreigners,  converted  Jews,  all  the  odd 
and  helpless  wanderers  from  beaten  ways,  were  to  be 
heard  of  at  Marriott's  rooms ;  and  all,  more  or  less, 
had  a  share  of  his  time  and  thoughts,  and  perhaps 
counsel.  He  was  sensible  of  worry  as  he  grew 
older ;  but  he  never  relaxed  his  efforts  to  do  what 


78  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

any  one  asked  of  him.  There  must  be  even  now  some 
still  living  who  know  what  no  one  else  knows,  how 
much  they  owe,  with  •  no  direct  claim  on  him,  to 
Charles  Marriott's  inexhaustible  patience  and  charity. 
The  pains  which  he  would  take  with  even  the  most 
uncongenial  and  unpromising  men,  who  somehow  had 
come  in  his  way,  and  seemed  thrown  on  his  charge, 
the  patience  with  which  he  would  bear  and  condone 
their  follies  and  even  worse,  were  not  to  be  told,  for, 
indeed,  few  knew  what  they  were. 

"He  was  always  ready  to  be  the  friend  of  any  one 
whose  conduct  gave  proofs  of  high  principle,  however 
inferior  to  himself  in  knowledge  or  acquirements,  and 
his  friendship  once  gained  was  not  easily  lost.  I 
believe  there  was  nothing  in  his  power  which  he  was 
not  ready  to  do  for  a  friend  who  wanted  his  help.  It 
is  not  easy  to  state  instances  of  such  kindness  without 
revealing  what  for  many  reasons  had  better  be  left 
untold.  But  many  such  have  come  to  my  knowledge, 
and  I  believe  there  are  many  more  known  only  to 
himself  and  to  those  who  derived  benefit  from  his 
disinterested  friendship."1 

Marriott's  great  contribution  to  the  movement  was 
his  solid,  simple  goodness,  his  immovable  hope,  his 
confidence  that  things  would  come  right.  With  much 
imaginativeness  open  to  poetical  grandeur  and  charm, 
and  not  without  some  power  of  giving  expression  to 
feeling,  he  was  destitute  of  all  that  made  so  many 
others  of  his  friends  interesting  as  men.  He  was 
nothing,  as  a  person  to  know  and  observe,  to  the 
genius  of  the  two  Mozleys,  to  the  brilliant  social 
charm  of  Frederic  Faber,  to  the  keen,  refined  intelli- 
gence of  Mark  Pattison,  to  the  originality  and  clever 

1  J.  M.,  MS.  Memoir. 


v  CHARLES  MARRIOTT  79 

eccentricity  of  William  Palmer  of  Magdalen.  And 
he  was  nothing  as  a  man  of  practical  power  for 
organising  and  carrying  out  successful  schemes  :  such 
power  was  not  much  found  at  Oxford  in  those  days. 
But  his  faith  in  his  cause,  as  the  cause  of  goodness 
and  truth,  was  proof  against  mockery  or  suspicion  or 
disaster.  When  ominous  signs  disturbed  other  people 
he  saw  none.  He  had  an  almost  perverse  subtlety 
of  mind  which  put  a  favourable  interpretation  on  what 
seemed  most  formidable.  As  his  master  drew  more 
and  more  out  of  sympathy  with  the  English  Church, 
Marriott,  resolutely  loyal  to  it  and  to  him,  refused  to 
understand  hints  and  indications  which  to  others  were 
but  too  plain.  He  vexed  and  even  provoked  Newman, 
in  the  last  agonies  of  the  struggle,  by  the  optimism 
with  which  he  clung  to  useless  theories  and  impossible 
hopes.  For  that  unquenchable  hoping  against  hope, 
and  hope  unabated  still  when  the  catastrophe  had 
come,  the  English  Church  at  least  owes  him  deep 
gratitude.  Throughout  those  anxious  years  he  never 
despaired  of  her. 

All  through  his  life  he  was  a  beacon  and  an  in- 
citement to  those  who  wished  to  make  a  good  use  of 
their  lives.  In  him  all  men  could  see,  whatever  their 
opinions  and  however  little  they  liked  him,  the  sim- 
plicity and  the  truth  of  a  self-denying  life  of  suffering 

—for  he  was  never  well — of  zealous  hard  work,  un- 
stinted, unrecompensed  ;  of  unabated  lofty  hopes  for  the 
great  interests  of  the  Church  and  the  University;  of  deep 
unpretending  matter-of-course  godliness  and  goodness 

—without  "  form  or  comeliness "  to  attract  any  but 
those  who  cared  for  them,  for  themselves  alone.  It 
is  almost  a  sacred  duty  to  those  who  remember  one 
who  cared  nothing  for  his  own  name  or  fame  to  recall 


8o  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

what  is  the  truth — that  no  one  did  more  to  persuade 
those  round  him  of  the  solid  underground  religious 
reality  of  the  movement.  Mr.  Thomas  Mozley,  among 
other  generous  notices  of  men  whom  the  world  and 
their  contemporaries  have  forgotten,  has  said  what  is 
not  more  than  justice.1  Speaking  of  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  movement,  and  the  spirit  of  its  members, 
"  There  had  never  been  seen  at  Oxford,  indeed 
seldom  anywhere,  so  large  and  noble  a  sacrifice  of  the 
most  precious  gifts  and  powers  to  a  sacred  cause," 
he  points  out  what  each  of  the  leaders  gave  to  it : 
"Charles  Marriott  threw  in  his  scholarship  and  some- 
thing more,  for  he  might  have  been  a  philosopher, 
and  he  had  poetry  in  his  veins,  being  the  son  of  the 
well-known  author  of  the  '  Devonshire  Lane.'  No 
one  sacrificed  himself  so  entirely  to  the  cause,  giving 
to  it  all  that  he  had  and  all  that  he  was,  as  Charles 
Marriott.  He  did  not  gather  large  congregations  ;  he 
did  not  write  works  of  genius  to  spread  his  name 
over  the  land,  and  to  all  time ;  he  had  few  of  the 
pleasures  or  even  of  the  comforts  that  spontaneously 
offer  themselves  in  any  field  of  enterprise.  He 
laboured  day  and  night  in  the  search  and  defence  of 
Divine  Truth.  His  admirers  were  not  the  thousands, 
but  the  scholars  who  could  really  appreciate.  I  con- 
fess to  have  been  a  little  ashamed  of  myself  when 
Bishop  Burgess  asked  me  about  Charles  Marriott,  as 
one  of  the  most  eminent  scholars  of  the  day.  Through 
sheer  ignorance  I  had  failed  in  adequate  appreciation." 
In  his  later  years  he  became  a  member  of  the  new 
Hebdomadal  Council  at  Oxford,  and  took  considerable 
part  in  working  the  new  constitution  of  the  University. 
In  an  epidemic  of  smallpox  at  Oxford  in  1854,  he 

1  Rent.  i.  447. 


v  CHARLES  MARRIOTT  81 

took  his  full  share  in  looking  after  the  sick,  and  caught 
the  disorder ;  but  he  recovered.  At  length,  in  the 
midst  of  troublesome  work  and  many  anxieties,  his  life 
of  toil  was  arrested  by  a  severe  paralytic  seizure,  2Qth 
June  1855.  He  partially  rallied,  and  survived  for 
some  time  longer ;  but  his  labours  were  ended.  He 
died  at  Bradfield,  25th  September  1858.  He  was 
worn  out  by  variety  and  pressure  of  unintermitted 
labour,  which  he  would  scarcely  allow  any  change  or 
holiday  to  relieve.  Exhaustion  made  illness,  when  it 
came,  fatal. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    OXFORD    TRACTS 

"ON  I4th  July  1833,"  we  read  in  Cardinal  Newman's 
Apologia,  "  Mr.  Keble  preached  the  assize  sermon  in 
the  University  Pulpit.  It  was  published  under  the  title 
of  National  Apostasy.  I  have  ever  considered  and 
kept  the  day  as  the  start  of  the  religious  movement 

of  1833." ' 

This  memorable  sermon  was  a  strong  expression 

of  the  belief  common  to  a  large  body  of  Churchmen 
amid  the  triumphs  of  the  Reform  Bill,  that  the  new 
governors  of  the  country  were  preparing  to  invade  the 
rights,  and  to  alter  the  constitution,  and  even  the  public 
documents,  of  the  Church.  The  suppression  of  ten 
Irish  Bishoprics,  in  defiance  of  Church  opinion,  showed 
how  ready  the  Government  was  to  take  liberties  in  a 
high  -  handed  way  with  the  old  adjustments  of  the 
relations  of  Church  and  State.  Churchmen  had  hitherto 
taken  for  granted  that  England  was  "  a  nation  which 
had  for  centuries  acknowledged,  as  an  essential  part  of 
its  theory  of  government,  that,  as  a  Christian  nation, 
she  is  also  a  part  of  Christ's  Church,  and  bound,  in  all 
her  legislation  and  policy,  by  the  fundamental  laws  of 
that  Church."  When  "a  Government  and  people,  so 

1  Apol.  p.  100. 


CHAP,  vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  83 

constituted,  threw  off  the  restraint  which  in  many 
respects  such  a  principle  would  impose  upon  them, 
nay,  disavowed  the  principle  itself,"  this,  to  those 
whose  ideas  Mr.  Keble  represented,  seemed  nothing 
short  of  a  "  direct  disavowal  of  the  sovereignty  of 
God.  If  it  be  true  anywhere  that  such  enactments 
are  forced  on  the  legislature  by  public  opinion,  is 
Apostasy  too  hard  a  word  to  describe  the  temper  of 
such  a  nation  ? "  The  sermon  was  a  call  to  face  in 
earnest  a  changed  state  of  things,  full  of  immediate 
and  pressing  danger ;  to  consider  how  it  was  to  be 
met  by  Christians  and  Churchmen,  and  to  watch 
motives  and  tempers.  "Surely  it  will  be  no  unworthy 
principle  if  any  man  is  more  circumspect  in  his 
behaviour,  more  watchful  and  fearful  of  himself,  more 
earnest  in  his  petitions  for  spiritual  aid,  from  a 
dread  of  disparaging  the  holy  name  of  the  English 
Church  in  her  hour  of  peril  by  his  own  personal  fault 
and  negligence.  As  to  those  who,  either  by  station 
or  temper,  feel  themselves  more  deeply  interested, 
they  cannot  be  too  careful  in  reminding  themselves 
that  one  chief  danger  in  times  of  change  and  excite- 
ment arises  from  their  tendency  to  engross  the  whole 
mind.  Public  concerns,  ecclesiastical  or  civil,  will 
prove  indeed  ruinous  to  those  who  permit  them  to 
occupy  all  their  care  and  thought,  neglecting  or 
undervaluing  ordinary  duties,  more  especially  those 
of  a  devotional  kind.  These  cautions  being  duly 
observed,  I  do  not  see  how  any  person  can  devote 
himself  too  entirely  to  the  cause  of  the  Apostolic 
Church  in  these  realms.  There  may  be,  as  far  as 
he  knows,  but  a  very  few  to  sympathise  with  him. 
He  may  have  to  wait  long,  and  very  likely  pass  out 
of  this  world,  before  he  see  any  abatement  in  the 


84  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

triumph  of  disorder  and  irreligion.  But,  if  he  be 
consistent,  he  possesses  to  the  utmost  the  personal 
consolations  of  a  good  Christian ;  and  as  a  true 
Churchman,  he  has  the  encouragement  which  no 
other  cause  in  the  world  can  impart  in  the  same 
degree  :  he  is  calmly,  soberly,  demonstrably  sure  that, 
sooner  or  later,  his  will  be  the  winning  side,  and  that 
the  victory  will  be  complete,  universal,  eternal." 

But  if  Mr.  Keble's  sermon  was  the  first  word  of 
the  movement,  its  first  step  was  taken  in  a  small 
meeting  of  friends,  at  Mr.  Hugh  James  Rose's 
parsonage  at  Hadleigh,  in  Suffolk,  between  the 
25th  and  the  2Qth  of  the  same  July.  At  this  little 
gathering,  the  ideas  and  anxieties  which  for  some 
time  past  had  filled  the  thoughts  of  a  number  of 
earnest  Churchmen,  and  had  brought  them  into 
communication  with  one  another,  came  to  a  head, 
and  issued  in  the  determination  to  move.  Mr.  Rose, 
a  man  of  high  character  and  distinction  in  his  day, 
who  had  recently  started  the  British  Magazine,  as  an 
organ  of  Church  teaching  and  opinion,  was  the  natural 
person  to  bring  about  such  a  meeting.1  It  was 
arranged  that  a  few  representative  men,  or  as  many  as 
were  able,  should  meet  towards  the  end  of  July  at 
Hadleigh  Rectory.  They  were  men  in  full  agreement 
on  the  main  questions,  but  with  great  differences  in 
temperament  and  habits  of  thought.  Mr.  Rose  was 
the  person  of  most  authority,  and  next  to  him,  Mr. 
Palmer ;  and  these,  with  Mr.  A.  Perceval,  formed  as  it 
were  the  right  wing  of  the  little  council.  Their 
Oxford  allies  were  the  three  Oriel  men,  Mr.  Keble, 
Mr.  Froude,  and  Mr.  Newman,  now  fresh  from  his 
escape  from  death  in  a  foreign  land,  and  from  the  long 

1  Palmer,  Narrative,  1843  (republished  1883),  pp.  5,  18. 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  85 

solitary  musings  in  his  Mediterranean  orange -boat, 
full  of  joyful  vigour  and  ready  for  enterprise  and 
work.1  In  the  result,  Mr.  Keble  and  Mr.  Newman 
were  not  present,  but  they  were  in  active,  corre- 
spondence with  the  others.2  From  this  meeting 
resulted  the  Tracts  for  the  Times,  and  the  agitation 
connected  with  them. 

These  friends  were  all  devoted  Churchmen,  but,  as 
has  been  said,  each  had  his  marked  character,  not  only 
as  a  man  but  as  a  Churchman.  The  most  important 
among  them  was  as  yet  the  least  prominent.  Two  of 
them  were  men  of  learning,  acquainted  with  the  great 
world  of  London,  and  who,  with  all  their  zeal,  had 
some  of  the  caution  which  comes  of  such  experience. 
At  the  time,  the  most  conspicuous  was  Mr.  Hugh 
James  Rose. 

Mr.  Rose  was  a  man  whose  name  and  whose  in- 
fluence, as  his  friends  thought,  have  been  overshadowed 
and  overlooked  in  the  popular  view  of  the  Church 
revival.  It  owed  to  him,  they  held,  not  only  its 
first  impulse,  but  all  that  was  best  and  most  hopeful 
in  it ;  and  when  it  lost  him,  it  lost  its  wisest  and 
ablest  guide  and  inspirer.  It  is  certainly  true  that 
when  that  revival  began  he  was  a  much  more  dis- 
tinguished and  important  person  than  any  of  the 
other  persons  interested  in  it.  As  far  as  could  be  seen 
at  the  time,  he  was  the  most  accomplished  divine 
and  teacher  in  the  English  Church.  He  was  a  really 
learned  man.  He  had  the  intellect  and  energy  and 
literary  skill  to  use  his  learning.  He  was  a  man  of 
singularly  elevated  and  religious  character ;  he  had 
something  of  the  eye  and  temper  of  a  statesman,  and 

1  Palmer  (1883),  pp.  40,  43,  "June          2  See  Palmer's  account  (1883),  pp. 
J833,  when  he  joined  us  at  Oxford."          45'47>  and  (1843),  pp.  6,  7. 


86  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

he  had  already  a  high  position.  He  was  profoundly 
loyal  to  the  Church,  and  keenly  interested  in  whatever 
affected  its  condition  and  its  fortunes.  As  early  as 
1825  he  had  in  some  lectures  at  Cambridge  called  the 
attention  of  English  Churchmen  to  the  state  of  religious 
thought  and  speculation  in  Germany,  and  to  the  mis- 
chiefs likely  to  react  on  English  theology  from  the 
rationalising  temper  and  methods  which  had  supplanted 
the  old  Lutheran  teaching ;  and  this  had  led  to  a 
sharp  controversy  with  Mr.  Pusey,  as  he  was  then, 
who  thought  that  Mr.  Rose1  had  both  exaggerated 
the  fact  itself  and  had  not  adequately  given  the 
historical  account  of  it.  He  had  the  prudence,  but 
not  the  backwardness,  of  a  man  of  large  knowledge, 
and  considerable  experience  of  the  world.  More 
alive  to  difficulties  and  dangers  than  his  younger 
associates,  he  showed  his  courage  and  his  unselfish 
earnestness  in  his  frank  sympathy  with  them,  daring 
and  outspoken  as  they  were,  and  in  his  willingness  to 
share  with  them  the  risks  of  an  undertaking  of  which 
no  one  knew  better  than  he  what  were  likely  to  be  the 
difficulties.  He  certainly  was  a  person  who  might  be 
expected  to  have  a  chief  part  in  directing  anything  with 
which  he  was  connected.  His  countenance  and  his  in- 
direct influence  were  very  important  elements,  both  in 
the  stirring  of  thought  which  led  to  the  Hadleigh  resolu- 
tions, and  in  giving  its  form  to  what  was  then  decided 

1   "  Mr.  Rose  .  .  .  was  the  one  com-  him  without  renewed  tenderness  "  (Mr. 

manding  figure  and  very  lovable  man,  T.  Mozley,  Reminiscences,  i.  308). 
that    the    frightened    and    discomfited  In   November    1838,  shortly  before 

Church  people  were  now  rallying  round.  Mr.    Rose's   death,   Mr.   Newman  had 

Few  people  have  left  so  distinct  an  im-  dedicated  a  volume  of  sermons  to  him 

pression  of  themselves  as  this  gentle-  — "  who,    when    hearts    were    failing, 

nan.      For    many    years    after,    when  bade  us  stir  up   the  gift   that   was  in 

he  was   no   more,  and   Newman    had  us,  and  betake   ourselves  to  our  true 

left   Rose's  standpoint  far  behind,  he  mother "  (Parochial  Sermons,  vol.  iv.) 
could  never  speak  of  him  or  think  of 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  87 

upon.  But  his  action  in  the  movement  was  impeded 
by  his  failure  in  health,  and  cut  short  by  his  early  death, 
January  1839.  How  he  would  have  influenced  the 
course  of  things  if  he  had  lived,  it  is  not  now  easy  to 
say.  He  must  have  been  reckoned  with  as  one  of  the 
chiefs.  He  would  have  been  opposed  to  anything 
that  really  tended  towards  Rome.  But  there  is  no 
reason  to  think  that  he  would  have  shrunk  from  any 
step  only  because  it  was  bold.  He  had  sympathy 
for  courage  and  genius,  and  he  had  knowledge  and 
authority  which  would  have  commanded  respect  for  his 
judgment  and  opinion.  But  it  is  too  much  to  say  either 
that  the  movement  could  not  have  been  without  him, 
or  that  it  was  specially  his  design  and  plan,  or  that  he 
alone  could  have  given  the  impulse  which  led  to  it ; 
though  it  seemed  at  one  time  as  if  he  was  to  be  its 
leader  and  chief.  Certainly  he  was  the  most  valuable 
and  the  most  loyal  of  its  early  auxiliaries. 

Another  coadjutor,  whose  part  at  the  time  also 
seemed  rather  that  of  a  chief,  was  Mr.  William  Palmer, 
of  Worcester  College.  He  had  been  educated  at 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  but  he  had  transferred  his 
home  to  Oxford,  both  in  the  University  and  the  city. 
He  was  a  man  of  exact  and  scholastic  mind,  well 
equipped  at  all  points  in  controversial  theology,  strong 
in  clear  theories  and  precise  definitions,  familiar  with 
objections  current  in  the  schools  and  with  the  answers 
to  them,  and  well  versed  in  all  the  questions,  argu- 
ments, and  authorities  belonging  to  the  great  debate 
with  Rome.  He  had  definite  and  well-arranged  ideas 
about  the  nature  and  office  of  the  Church  ;  and,  from 
his  study  of  the  Roman  controversy,  he  had  at  com- 
mand the  distinctions  necessary  to  discriminate  between 
things  which  popular  views  confused,  and  to  protect 


THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 


the  doctrines  characteristic  of  the  Church  from  being 
identified  with  Romanism.  Especially  he  had  given 
great  attention  to  the  public  devotional  language  and 
forms  of  the  Church,  and  had  produced  by  far  the  best 
book  in  the  English  language  on  the  history  and 
significance  of  the  offices  of  the  English  Church — the 
Origines  Liturgiccz,  published  at  the  University  Press 
in  1832.  It  was  a  book  to  give  a  man  authority 
with  divines  and  scholars ;  and  among  those  with 
whom  at  this  time  he  acted  no  one  had  so  compact 
and  defensible  a  theory,  even  if  it  was  somewhat  rigid 
and  technical,  of  the  peculiar  constitution  of  the  English 
Church  as  Mr.  Palmer.  With  the  deepest  belief  in 
this  theory,  he  saw  great  dangers  threatening,  partly 
from  general  ignorance  and  looseness  of  thought,  partly 
from  antagonistic  ideas  and  principles  only  too  distinct 
and  too  popular  ;  and  he  threw  all  his  learning  and  zeal 
on  the  side  of  those  who,  like  himself,  were  alive  to 
those  dangers,  and  were  prepared  for  a  great  effort  to 
counteract  them. 

The  little  company  which  met  at  Hadleigh  Rectory, 
from  25th  to  2Qth  July  1833,  met — as  other  knots  of  men 
have  often  met,  to  discuss  a  question  or  a  policy,  or  to 
found  an  association,  or  a  league,  or  a  newspaper — to 
lay  down  the  outlines  of  some  practical  scheme  of 
work ;  but  with  little  foresight  of  the  venture  they 
were  making,  or  of  the  momentous  issues  which  de- 
pended on  their  meeting.  Later  on,  when  controversy 
began,  it  became  a  favourite  rhetorical  device  to  call  it 
by  the  ugly  name  of  a  "  conspiracy."  Certainly  Fronde 
called  it  so,  and  Mr.  Palmer ;  and  Mr.  Perceval  wrote 
a  narrative  to  answer  the  charge.  It  was  a  "con- 
spiracy," as  any  other  meeting  would  be  of  men  with 
an  object  which  other  men  dislike. 


THE  OXFORD  TRACTS 


Of  the  Oriel  men,  only  Froude  went  to  Hadleigh. 
Keble  and  Newman  were  both  absent,  but  in  close 
correspondence  with  the  others.  Their  plans  had  not 
taken  any  definite  shape  ;  but  they  were  ready  for  any 
sacrifice  and  service,  and  they  were  filled  with  wrath 
against  the  insolence  of  those  who  thought  that  the 
Church  was  given  over  into  their  hands,  and  against 
the  apathy  and  cowardice  of  those  who  let  her  enemies 
have  their  way.  Yet  with  much  impatience  and  many 
stern  determinations  in  their  hearts,  they  were  all  of 
them  men  to  be  swayed  by  the  judgment  and  experience 
of  their  friends. 

The  state  of  mind  under  which  the  four  friends  met 
at  the  Hadleigh  conference  has  been  very  distinctly 
and  deliberately  recorded  by  all  of  them.  Churchmen 
in  our  days  hardly  realise  what  the  face  of  things  then 
looked  like  to  men  who,  if  they  felt  deeply,  were  no 
mere  fanatics  or  alarmists,  but  sober  and  sagacious 
observers,  not  affected  by  mere  cries,  but  seeing 
clearly  beneath  the  surface  of  things  their  certain 
and  powerful  tendencies.  "  We  felt  ourselves,"  writes 
Mr.  Palmer  some  years  afterwards,1  "  assailed  by 
enemies  from  without  and  foes  within.  Our  Prelates 
insulted  and  threatened  by  Ministers  of  State.  In 
Ireland  ten  bishoprics  suppressed.  We  were  advised 
to  feel  thankful  that  a  more  sweeping  measure  had  not 
been  adopted.  What  was  to  come  next  ?  .  .  .  Was 
the  same  principle  of  concession  to  popular  clamour 
...  to  be  exemplified  in  the  dismemberment  of  the 
English  Church  ?  .  .  .  We  were  overwhelmed  with 

o 

pamphlets  on  Church  reform.     Lord  Henley,  brother- 
in-law  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Dr.   Burton,  and  others  of 

1  Narrative  of  Events  connected  with      by  W.  Palmer  (published  1843,  repub- 
the  publication  of  Tracts  for  the  Times,      lished  1883),  pp.  96-100  (abridged). 


90  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

name  and  influence  led  the  way.  Dr.  Arnold  of 
Rugby  ventured  to  propose  that  all  sects  should  be 
united  by  Act  of  Parliament  with  the  Church  of 
England.  Reports,  apparently  well  founded,  were 
prevalent  that  some  of  the  Prelates  were  favourable 
to  alterations  in  the  Liturgy.  Pamphlets  were  in  wide 
circulation  recommending  the  abolition  of  the  Creeds 
(at  least  in  public  worship),  especially  urging  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  Athanasian  Creed ;  the  removal  of  all 
mention  of  the  Blessed  Trinity ;  of  the  doctrine  of 
baptismal  regeneration  ;  of  the  practice  of  absolution. 
We  knew  not  to  what  quarter  to  look  for  support. 
A  Prelacy  threatened  and  apparently  intimidated  ;  a 
Government  making  its  power  subservient  to  agi- 
tators, who  avowedly  sought  the  destruction  of  the 
Church.  .  .  .  And,  worst  of  all,  no  principle  in  the 
public  mind  to  which  we  could  appeal ;  an  utter 
ignorance  of  all  rational  grounds  of  attachment  to 
the  Church  ;  an  oblivion  of  its  spiritual  character,  as 
an  institution  not  of  man  but  of  God  ;  the  grossest 
Erastianism  most  widely  prevalent,  especially  amongst 
all  classes  of  politicians.  There  was  in  all  this  enough 
to  appal  the  stoutest  heart ;  and  those  who  can  recall 
the  feeling  of  those  days  will  at  once  remember  the 
deep  depression  into  which  the  Church  had  fallen,  and 
the  gloomy  forebodings  universally  prevalent." 

"  Before  the  spirit  and  temper  of  those  who  met  at 
the  conference  is  condemned  as  extravagant,"  writes 
Mr.  Perceval  in  1842,!  "let  the  reader  call  to  mind 
what  was  then  actually  the  condition  as  well  as  the 
prospect  of  the  Church  and  nation  :  an  agrarian  and 
civic  insurrection  against  the  bishops  and  clergy,  and 

1   Collection  of  Papers  connected  with  the   Theological  Movement  of  1833,  by 
A.  P.  Perceval  (1842),  p.  25. 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  91 

all  who  desired  to  adhere  to  the  existing  institutions  of 
the  country  ;  the  populace  goaded  on,  openly  by  the 
speeches,  covertly  (as  was  fully  believed  at  the  time) 
by  the  paid  emissaries  of  the  ministers  of  the  Crown  ; 
the  chief  of  those  ministers  in  his  place  in  Parliament 
bidding  the  bishops  '  set  their  house  in  order ';  the  mob 
taking  him  at  his  word,  and  burning  to  the  ground  the 
palace  of  the  Bishop  of  Bristol,  with  the  public  build- 
ings of  the  city,  while  they  shouted  the  Premier's  name 
in  triumph  on  the  ruins."  The  pressing  imminence  of 
the  danger  is  taken  for  granted  by  the  calmest  and 
most  cautious  of  the  party,  Mr.  Rose,  in  a  letter  of 
February  1833.  "That  something  is  requisite,  is 
certain.  The  only  thing  is,  that  whatever  is  done 
ought  to  be  quickly  done,  for  the  danger  is  immediate, 
and  /  should  have  little  fear  if  I  thought  that  we 
could  stand  for  ten  or  fifteen  years  as  we  are''  In  the 
Apologia  Cardinal  Newman  recalls  what  was  before 
him  in  those  days.  "The  Whigs  had  come  into 
power ;  Lord  Grey  had  told  the  bishops  to  '  set  their 
house  in  order,'  and  some  of  the  prelates  had  been 
insulted  and  threatened  in  the  streets  of  London. 
The  vital  question  was,  How  were  we  to  keep  the 
Church  from  being  Liberalised  ?  There  was  so  much 
apathy  on  the  subject  in  some  quarters,  such  imbecile 
alarm  in  others  ;  the  true  principles  of  Churchmanship 
seemed  so  radically  decayed,  and  there  was  such  dis- 
traction in  the  councils  of  the  clergy.  The  Bishop  of 
London  of  the  day,  an  active  and  open-hearted  man, 
had  been  for  years  engaged  in  diluting  the  high  ortho- 
doxy of  the  Church  by  the  introduction  of  the  Evan- 
gelical body  into  places  of  influence  and  trust.  He 
had  deeply  offended  men  who  agreed  with  myself  by 

1  Palmer's  Narrative  (1883),  p.  101. 


92  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

an  off-hand  saying  (as  it  was  reported)  to  the  effect 
that  belief  in  the  apostolical  succession  had  gone  out 
with  the  Non-jurors.  '  We  can  count  you,'  he  said  to 
some  of  the  gravest  and  most  venerated  persons  of  the 
old  school.  ...  I  felt  affection  for  my  own  Church, 
but  not  tenderness  :  I  felt  dismay  at  her  prospects, 
anger  and  scorn  at  her  do-nothing  perplexity.  I 
thought  that  if  Liberalism  once  got  a  footing  within 
her,  it  was  sure  of  victory  in  the  event.  I  saw  that 
Reformation  principles  were  powerless  to  rescue  her. 
As  to  leaving  her,  the  thought  never  crossed  my 
imagination  :  still  I  ever  kept  before  me  that  there 
was  something  greater  than  the  Established  Church, 
and  that  that  was  the  Church  Catholic  and  Apostolic, 
set  up  from  the  beginning,  of  which  she  was  but  the 
local  presence  and  organ.  She  was  nothing  unless 
she  was  this.  She  must  be  dealt  with  strongly  or 
she  would  be'  lost.  There  was  need  of  a  second 
Reformation." 

"  If  /  thought  that  we  could  stand  ten  or  fifteen 
years  as  we  are,  I  should  have  little  fear,"  said  Mr. 
Rose.  He  felt  that,  if  only  he  could  secure  a  respite, 
he  had  the  means  and  the  hope  of  opening  the  eyes 
of  Churchmen.  They  were  secure  and  idle  from  long 
prosperity,  and  now  they  were  scared  and  perplexed 
by  the  suddenness  of  an  attack  for  which  they  were 
wholly  unprepared.  But  he  had  confidence  in  his  own 
convictions.  He  had  around  him  ability  and  zeal,  in 
which  he  had  the  best  reason  to  trust.  He  might 
hope,  if  he  had  time,  to  turn  the  tide.  But  this  time 
to  stand  to  arms  was  just  what  he  had  not.  The 
danger,  he  felt,  was  upon  him.  He  could  not  wait. 
So  he  acquiesced  in  an  agitation  which  so  cautious  and 
steady  a  man  would  otherwise  hardly  have  chosen. 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  93 

"That  something  must  be  done  is  certain.  The  only 
thing  is,  that  whatever  is  done  ought  to  be  q^lickly 
done."  Nothing  can  show  more  forcibly  the  immi- 
nence and  pressure  of  the  crisis  than  words  like  these, 
not  merely  from  Froude  and  his  friends,  but  from  such 
a  man  as  Mr.  Hugh  James  Rose. 

"  Something  must  be  done,"  but  what  ?  This  was 
not  so  easy  to  say.  It  was  obvious  that  men  must  act 
in  concert,  and  must  write  ;  but  beyond  these  general 
points,  questions  and  difficulties  arose.  The  first 
idea  that  suggested  itself  at  Hadleigh  was  a  form  of 
association,  which  would  have  been  something  like  the 
English  Church  Union  or  the  Church  Defence  Asso- 
ciation of  our  days.  It  probably  was  Mr.  Palmer's 
idea ;  and  for  some  time  the  attempt  to  carry  it  into 
effect  was  followed  up  at  Oxford.  Plans  of  "Associa- 
tion" were  drawn  up  and  rejected.  The  endeavour 
brought  out  differences  of  opinion — differences  as  to 
the  Tightness  or  the  policy  of  specific  mention  of 
doctrines  ;  differences  as  to  the  union  of  Church  and 
State,  on  the  importance  of  maintaining  which,  as  long 
as  possible,  Mr.  Newman  sided  with  Mr.  Palmer 
against  Mr.  Keble's  more  uncompromising  view.  A 
"third  formulary"  was  at  length  adopted.  "Events," 
it  said,  "  have  occurred  within  the  last  few  years  calcu- 
lated to  inspire  the  true  members  and  friends  of  the 
Church  with  the  deepest  uneasiness."  It  went  on  to 
notice  that  political  changes  had  thrown  power  into  the 
hands  of  the  professed  enemies  of  the  Church  as  an 
establishment ;  but  it  was  not  merely  as  an  establishment 
that  it  was  in  most  serious  danger.  "  Every  one,"  it  says, 
"who  has  become  acquainted  with  the  literature  of  the 
day,  must  have  observed  the  sedulous  attempts  made 
in  various  quarters  to  reconcile  members  of  the  Church 


94  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

to  alterations  in  its  doctrines  and  discipline.  Projects 
of  change,  which  include  the  annihilation  of  our  Creeds 
and  the  removal  of  doctrinal  statements  incidentally 
contained  in  our  worship,  have  been  boldly  and  assid- 
uously put  forth.  Our  services  have  been  subjected 
to  licentious  criticism,  with  the  view  of  superseding 
some  of  them  and  of  entirely  remodelling  others.  The 
very  elementary  principles  of  our  ritual  and  discipline 
have  been  rudely  questioned  ;  our  apostolical  polity  has 
been  ridiculed  and  denied."  The  condition  of  the  times 
made  these  things  more  than  ordinarily  alarming,  and 
the  pressing  danger  was  urged  as  a  reason  for  the 
formation,  by  members  of  the  Church  in  various  parts 
of  the  kingdom,  of  an  association  on  a  few  broad 
principles  of  union  for  the  defence  of  the  Church. 
"  They  feel  strongly,"  said  the  authors  of  the  paper, 
"  that  no  fear  of  the  appearance  of  forwardness  should 
dissuade  them  from  a  design,  which  seems  to  be  de- 
manded of  them  by  their  affection  towards  that  spiritual 
community  to  which  they  owe  their  hopes  of  the  world 
to  come,  and  by  a  sense  of  duty  to  that  God  and 
Saviour  who  is  its  Founder  and  Defender."  But  the 
plan  of  an  Association,  or  of  separate  Associations, 
which  was  circulated  in  the  autumn  of  1833,  came 
to  nothing.  "Jealousy  was  entertained  of  it  in 
high  quarters."  Froude  objected  to  any  association 
less  wide  than  the  Church  itself.  Newman  had 
a  horror  of  committees  and  meetings  and  great 
people  in  London.  And  thus,  in  spite  of  Mr. 
Palmer's  efforts,  favoured  by  a  certain  number  of 
influential  and  dignified  friends,  the  Association  would 
not  work.  But  the  stir  about  it  was  not  without  result. 
Mr.  Palmer  travelled  about  the  country  with  the  view 
of  bringing  the  state  of  things  before  the  clergy.  In 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  95 

place  of  the  Association,  an  Address  to  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  was  resolved  upon.  It  was  drawn 
up  by  Mr.  Palmer,  who  undertook  the  business  of 
circulating  it.  In  spite  of  great  difficulties  and  trouble 
—of  the  alarm  of  friends  like  Mr.  Rose,  who  was 
afraid  that  it  would  cause  schism  in  the  Church  ;  of  the 
general  timidity  of  the  dignified  clergy  ;  of  the  distrust 
and  the  crotchets  of  others ;  of  the  coldness  of  the 
bishops  and  the  opposition  of  some  of  them — it  was 
presented  with  the  signatures  of  some  7000  clergy  to 
the  Archbishop  in  February  1834.  It  bore  the  names, 
among  others,  of  Dr.  Christopher  Wordsworth,  Master 
of  Trinity ;  Dr.  Gilbert,  of  Brasenose  College ;  Dr. 
Faussett,  and  Mr.  Keble.  And  this  was  not  all.  A  Lay 
Address  followed.  There  were  difficulties  about  the 
first  form  proposed,  which  was  thought  to  say  too 
much  about  the  doctrine  and  discipline  of  the  Church  ; 
and  it  was  laid  aside  for  one  with  more  vague  expres- 
sions about  the  "consecration  of  the  State,"  and  the 
practical  benefits  of  the  Established  Church.  In  this 
form  it  was  signed  by  230,000  heads  of  families,  and 
presented  to  the  Archbishop  in  the  following  May. 
"  From  these  two  events,"  writes  Mr.  Perceval  in 
1842,  "we  may  date  the  commencement  of  the  turn  of 
the  tide,  which  had  threatened  to  overwhelm  our 
Church  and  our  religion."  There  can,  at  any  rate,  be 
little  doubt  that  as  regards  the  external  position  of  the 
Church  in  the  country,  this  agitation  was  a  success. 
It  rallied  the  courage  of  Churchmen,  and  showed  that 
they  were  stronger  and  more  resolute  than  their 
enemies  thought.  The  revolutionary  temper  of  the 
times  had  thrown  all  Churchmen  on  the  Conserva- 
tive side ;  and  these  addresses  were  partly  helped 

1   Collection  of  Papers,  p.  12. 


96  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

by  political  Conservatism,  and  also  reacted  in  its 
favour. 

Some  of  the  Hadleigh  friends  would  probably  have 
been  content  to  go  on  in  this  course,  raising  and  keep- 
ing alive  a  strong  feeling  in  favour  of  things  as  they 
were,  creating  a  general  sympathy  with  the  Church,  and 
confidence  in  the  peculiar  excellency  of  its  wise  and 
sober  institutions,  sedulously  but  cautiously  endeavour- 
ing to  correct  popular  mistakes  about  them,  and  to 
diffuse  a  sounder  knowledge  and  a  sounder  tone  of 
religious  feeling.  This  is  what  Mr.  H.  J.  Rose  would 
have  wished,  only  he  felt  that  he  could  not  insure  the 
"ten  or  fifteen  years"  which  he  wanted  to  work  this 
gradual  change.  Both  he  and  Mr.  Palmer  would  have 
made  London,  to  use  a  military  term,  their  base  of 
operations.  The  Oriel  men,  on  the  other  hand,  thought 
that  "  Universities  are  the  natural  centres  of  intellectual 
movements " ;  they  were  for  working  more  spon- 
taneously in  the  freedom  of  independent  study  ;  they 
had  little  faith  in  organisation  ;  "  living  movements," 
they  said,  "do  not  come  of  committees."  But  at  Had- 
leigh it  was  settled  that  there  was  writing  to  be  done, 
in  some  way  or  other ;  and  on  this,  divergence  of 
opinion  soon  showed  itself,  both  as  to  the  matter  and 
the  tone  of  what  was  to  be  written. 

For  the  writers  of  real  force,  the  men  of  genius, 
were  the  three  Oriel  men,  with  less  experience,  at  that 
time,  with  less  extensive  learning,  than  Mr.  Rose  and 
Mr.  Palmer.  But  they  were  bolder  and  keener 
spirits  ;  they  pierced  more  deeply  into  the  real  con- 
dition and  prospects  of  the  times ;  they  were  not 
disposed  to  smooth  over  and  excuse  what  they  thought 
hollow  and  untrue,  to  put  up  with  decorous  compro- 
mises and  half-measures,  to  be  patient  towards  apathy, 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  97 

negligence,  or  insolence.  They  certainly  had  more  in 
them  of  the  temper  of  warfare.  We  know  from  their  own 
avowals  that  a  great  anger  possessed  them,  that  they 
were  indignant  at  the  sacred  idea  of  the  Church  being  lost 
and  smothered  by  selfishness  and  stupidity ;  they  were 
animated  by  the  spirit  which  makes  men  lose  patience 
with  abuses  and  their  apologists,  and  gives  them  no 
peace  till  they  speak  out.  Mr.  Newman  felt  that, 
though  associations  and  addresses  might  be  very  well, 
what  the  Church  and  the  clergy  and  the  country 
wanted  was  plain  speaking ;  and  that  plain  speaking 
could  not  be  got  by  any  papers  put  forth  as  joint 
manifestoes,  or  with  the  revision  and  sanction  of  "  safe  " 
and  "judicious"  advisers.  It  was  necessary  to  write, 
and  to  write  as  each  man  felt :  and  he  determined  that 
each  man  should  write  and  speak  for  himself,  though 
working  in  concert  and  sympathy  with  others  towards 
the  supreme  end  —  the  cause  and  interests  of  the 
Church. 

And  thus  were  born  the  Tracts  for  the  Times.1 
For  a  time  Mr.  Palmer's  line  and  Mr.  Newman's  line  ran 
on  side  by  side ;  but  Mr.  Palmer's  plan  had  soon  done 
all  that  it  could  do,  important  as  that  was ;  it  gradually 
faded  out  of  sight,  and  the  attention  of  all  who  cared 
for,  or  who  feared  or  who  hated  the  movement,  was 
concentrated  on  the  "  Oxford  Tracts."  They  were  the 
watchword  and  the  symbol  of  an  enterprise  which  all 
soon  felt  to  be  a  remarkable  one — remarkable,  if  in 
nothing  else,  in  the  form  in  which  it  was  started. 
Great  changes  and  movements  have  been  begun  in 
various  ways ;  in  secret  and  underground  communica- 
tions, in  daring  acts  of  self-devotion  or  violence,  in 

1   "  That  portentous  birth    of  time,   the    Tracts  for  the    Times.'1'' — Mozley, 
Remin.  i.  311. 

H 


98  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

the  organisation  of  an  institution,  in  the  persistent  dis- 
play of  a  particular  temper  and  set  of  habits,  especially 
in  the  form  of  a  stirring  and  enthralling  eloquence,  in 
popular  preaching,  in  fierce  appeals  to  the  passions. 
But  though  tracts  had  become  in  later  times  familiar 
instruments  of  religious  action,  they  had,  from  the 
fashion  of  using  them,  become  united  in  the  minds  of 
many  with  rather  disparaging  associations.  The  per- 
tinacity of  good  ladies  who  pressed  them  on  chance 
strangers,  and  who  extolled  their  efficacy  as  if  it  was 
that  of  a  quack  medicine,  had  lowered  the  general 
respect  for  them.  The  last  thing  that  could  have  been 
thought  of  was  a  great  religious  revolution  set  in 
motion  by  tracts  and  leaflets,  and  taking  its  character 
and  name  from  them. 

But  the  ring  of  these  early  Tracts  was  something 
very  different  from  anything  of  the  kind  yet  known  in 
England.  They  were  clear,  brief,  stern  appeals  to  con- 
science and  reason,  sparing  of  words,  utterly  without 
rhetoric,  intense  in  purpose.  They  were  like  the  short, 
sharp,  rapid  utterances  of  men  in  pain  and  danger  and 
pressing  emergency.  The  first  one  gave  the  keynote 
of  the  series.  Mr.  Newman  "  had  out  of  his  own  head 
begun  the  Tracts "  :  he  wrote  the  opening  one  in  a 
mood  which  he  has  himself  described.  He  was  in  the 
"exultation  of  health  restored  and  home  regained": 
he  felt,  he  says,  an  "exuberant  and  joyous  energy 
which  he  never  had  before  or  since "  ;  "  his  health 
and  strength  had  come  back  to  him  with  such  a  re- 
bound "  that  some  of  his  friends  did  not  know  him. 
"  I  had  the  consciousness  that  I  was  employed  in  that 
work  which  I  had  been  dreaming  about,  and  which  I 
felt  to  be  so  momentous  and  inspiring.  I  had  a 
supreme  confidence  in  our  cause  ;  we  were  upholding 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  99 

that  primitive  Christianity  which  was  delivered  for  all 
time  by  the  early  teachers  of  the  Church,  and  which 
was  registered  and  attested  in  the  Anglican  formularies 
and  by  the  Anglican  divines.  That  ancient  religion 
had  well-nigh  faded  out  of  the  land  through  the  political 
changes  of  the  last  1 50  years,  and  it  must  be  restored. 
It  would  be,  in  fact,  a  second  Reformation — a  better 
Reformation,  for  it  would  return,  not  to  the  sixteenth 
century,  but  to  the  seventeenth.  No  time  was  to  be 
lost,  for  the  Whigs  had  come  to  do  their  worst,  and  the 
rescue  might  come  too  late.  Bishoprics  were  already 
in  course  of  suppression ;  Church  property  was  in 
course  of  confiscation  ;  sees  would  be  soon  receiving 
unsuitable  occupants.  We  knew  enough  to  begin 
preaching,  and  there  was  no  one  else  to  preach.  I 
felt,"  he  goes  on,1  with  a  characteristic  recollection  of 
his  own  experience  when  he  started  on  his  voyage  with 
Froude  in  the  Hermes,  "  as  on  a  vessel,  which  first  gets 
under  weigh,  and  then  clears  out  the  deck,  and  stores 
away  luggage  and  live  stock  into  their  proper  recep- 
tacles." The  first  three  Tracts  bear  the  date  of  Qth 
September  1833.  They  were  the  first  public  utter- 
ance of  the  movement.  The  opening  words  of  this 
famous  series  deserve  to  be  recalled.  They  are  new 
to  most  of  the  present  generation. 

TO  MY  BRETHREN  IN  THE  SACRED  MINISTRY,  THE  PRESBYTERS  AND 
DEACONS  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  CHRIST  IN  ENGLAND,  ORDAINED 
THEREUNTO  BY  THE  HOLY  GHOST  AND  THE  IMPOSITION  OF 
HANDS. 

FELLOW-LABOURERS, — I  am  but  one  of  yourselves — a  Presbyter; 
and  therefore  I  conceal  my  name,  lest  I  should  take  too  much  on 
myself  by  speaking  in  my  own  person.  Yet  speak  I  must ;  for  the 
times  are  very  evil,  yet  no  one  speaks  against  them. 

1  Froude,  Remains,  i.  265. 


ioo  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

Is  not  this  so  ?  Do  not  we  "  look  one  upon  another,"  yet  per- 
form nothing?  Do  we  not  all  confess  the  peril  into  which  the 
Church  is  come,  yet  sit  still  each  in  his  own  retirement,  as  if  mount- 
ains and  seas  cut  off  brother  from  brother  ?  Therefore  suffer  me, 
while  I  try  to  draw  you  forth  from  those  pleasant  retreats,  which  it 
has  been  our  blessedness  hitherto  to  enjoy,  to  contemplate  the  con- 
dition and  prospects  of  our  Holy  Mother  in  a  practical  way ;  so  that 
one  and  all  may  unlearn  that  idle  habit,  which  has  grown  upon  us, 
of  owning  the  state  of  things  to  be  bad,  yet  doing  nothing  to 
remedy  it. 

Consider  a  moment.  Is  it  fair,  is  it  dutiful,  to  suffer  our  bishops 
to  stand  the  brunt  of  the  battle  without  doing  our  part  to  support 
them  ?  Upon  them  comes  "  the  care  of  all  the  Churches."  This 
cannot  be  helped ;  indeed  it  is  their  glory.  Not  one  of  us  would 
wish  in  the  least  to  deprive  them  of  the  duties,  the  toils,  the  re- 
sponsibilities of  their  high  office.  And,  black  event  as  it  would  be 
for  the  country,  yet  (as  far  as  they  are  concerned)  we  could  not  wish 
them  a  more  blessed  termination  of  their  course  than  the  spoiling  of 
their  goods  and  martyrdom. 

To  them  then  we  willingly  and  affectionately  relinquish  their 
high  privileges  and  honours ;  we  encroach  not  upon  the  rights  of  the 
SUCCESSORS  OF  THE  APOSTLES  ;  we  touch  not  their  sword  and  crozier. 
Yet  surely  we  may  be  their  shield-bearers  in  the  battle  without 
offence ;  and  by  our  voice  and  deeds  be  to  them  what  Luke  and 
Timothy  were  to  St.  Paul. 

Now  then  let  me  come  at  once  to  the  subject  which  leads  me  to 
address  you.  Should  the  Government  and  the  Country  so  far  forget 
their  God  as  to  cast  off  the  Church,  to  deprive  it  of  its  temporal 
honours  and  substance,  on  what  will  you  rest  the  claim  of  respect 
and  attention  which  you  make  upon  your  flocks?  Hitherto  you 
have  been  upheld  by  your  birth,  your  education,  your  wealth,  your 
connexions ;  should  these  secular  advantages  cease,  on  what  must 
Christ's  Ministers  depend  ?  Is  not  this  a  serious  practical  question  ? 
We  know  how  miserable  is  the  state  of  religious  bodies  not  sup- 
ported by  the  State.  Look  at  the  Dissenters  on  all  sides  of  you, 
and  you  will  see  at  once  that  their  Ministers,  depending  simply  upon 
the  people,  become  the  creatures  of  the  people.  Are  you  content 
that  this  should  be  your  case  ?  Alas  !  can  a  greater  evil  befall 
Christians,  than  for  their  teachers  to  be  guided  by  them,  instead  of 
guiding  ?  How  can  we  "  hold  fast  the  form  of  sound  words,"  and 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  101 

"  keep  that  which  is  committed  to  our  trust,"  if  our  influence  is  to 
depend  simply  on  our  popularity?  Is  it  not  our  very  office  to 
oppose  the  world  ?  Can  we  then  allow  ourselves  to  court  it  ?  to  preach 
smooth  things  and  prophesy  deceits  ?  to  make  the  way  of  life  easy 
to  the  rich  and  indolent,  and  to  bribe  the  humbler  classes  by  excite- 
ments and  strong  intoxicating  doctrine  ?  Surely  it  must  not  be  so  ; 
— and  the  question  recurs,  on  what  are  we  to  rest  our  authority 
when  the  State  deserts  us  ? 

Christ  has  not  left  His  Church  without  claim  of  its  own  upon 
the  attention  of  men.  Surely  not.  Hard  Master  He  cannot  be,  to 
bid  us  oppose  the  world,  yet  give  us  no  credentials  for  so  doing. 
There  are  some  who  rest  their  divine  mission  on  their  own  unsup- 
ported assertion;  others,  who  rest  it  upon  their  popularity;  others,  on 
their  success;  and  others,  who  rest  it  upon  their  temporal  distinctions. 
This  last  case  has,  perhaps,  been  too  much  our  own ;  I  fear  we  have 
neglected  the  real  ground  on  which  our  authority  is  built — OUR 

APOSTOLICAL  DESCENT. 

We  have  been  born,  not  of  blood,  nor  of  the  will  of  the  flesh, 
nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God.  The  Lord  Jesus  Christ  gave 
His  Spirit  to  His  Apostles ;  they  in  turn  laid  their  hands  on  those 
who  should  succeed  them ;  and  these  again  on  others ;  and  so  the 
sacred  gift  has  been  handed  down  to  our  present  bishops,  who 
have  appointed  us  as  their  assistants,  and  in  some  sense  re- 
presentatives. 

Now  every  one  of  us  believes  this.  I  know  that  some  will  at 
first  deny  they  do ;  still  they  do  believe  it.  Only,  it  is  not  suffi- 
ciently, practically  impressed  on  their  minds.  They  do  believe  it ; 
for  it  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Ordination  Service,  which  they  have 
recognised  as  truth  in  the  most  solemn  season  of  their  lives.  In 
order,  then,  not  to  prove,  but  to  remind  and  impress,  I  entreat  your 
attention  to  the  words  used  when  you  were  made  ministers  of  Christ's 
Church. 

The  office  of  Deacon  was  thus  committed  to  you :  "  Take  thou 
authority  to  execute  the  office  of  a  Deacon  in  the  Church  of  God 
committed  unto  thee  :  In  the  name,  etc." 

And  the  Priesthood  thus  : 

"  Receive  the  Holy  Ghost,  for  the  office  and  work  of  a  Priest,  in 
the  Church  of  God,  now  committed  unto  thee  by  the  imposition  of 
our  hands.  Whose  sins  thou  dost  forgive,  they  are  forgiven  ;  and 
whose  sins  thou  dost  retain,  they  are  retained.  And  be  thou  a 


102  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

faithful  dispenser  of  the  Word  of  God,  and  of  His  Holy  Sacraments  : 
In  the  name,  etc." 

These,  I  say,  were  words  spoken  to  us,  and  received  by  us,  when 
we  were  brought  nearer  to  God  than  at  any  other  time  of  our  lives. 
I  know  the  grace  of  ordination  is  contained  in  the  laying  on  of 
hands,  not  in  any  form  of  words ; — yet  in  our  own  case  (as  has  ever 
been  usual  in  the  Church)  words  of  blessing  have  accompanied  the 
act.  Thus  we  have  confessed  before  God  our  belief  that  the  bishop 
who  ordained  us  gave  us  the  Holy  Ghost,  gave  us  the  power  to 
bind  and  to  loose,  to  administer  the  Sacraments,  and  to  preach. 
Now  how  is  he  able  to  give  these  great  gifts  ?  Whence  is  his  right  ? 
Are  these  words  idle  (which  would  be  taking  God's  name  in  vain), 
or  do  they  express  merely  a  wish  (which  surely  is  very  far  below 
their  meaning),  or  do  they  not  rather  indicate  that  the  speaker  is 
conveying  a  gift  ?  Surely  they  can  mean  nothing  short  of  this.  But 
whence,  I  ask,  his  right  to  do  so  ?  Has  he  any  right,  except  as 
having  received  the  power  from  those  who  consecrated  him  to  be  a 
bishop?  He  could  not  give  what  he  had  never  received.  It  is 
plain  then  that  he  but  transmits  ;  and  that  the  Christian  Ministry  is 
a  succession.  And  if  we  trace  back  the  power  of  ordination  from 
hand  to  hand,  of  course  we  shall  come  to  the  Apostles  at  last  We 
know  we  do,  as  a  plain  historical  fact ;  and  therefore  all  we,  who 
have  been  ordained  clergy,  in  the  very  form  of  our  ordination 
acknowledged  the  doctrine  of  the  APOSTOLICAL  SUCCESSION. 

And  for  the  same  reason,  we  must  necessarily  consider  none  to 
be  really  ordained  who  have  not  thus  been  ordained.  For  if  ordina- 
tion is  a  divine  ordinance,  it  must  be  necessary ;  and  if  it  is  not  a 
divine  ordinance,  how  dare  we  use  it  ?  Therefore  all  who  use  it,  all 
of  us,  must  consider  it  necessary.  As  well  might  we  pretend  the 
Sacraments  are  not  necessary  to  salvation,  while  we  make  use  of  the 
offices  in  the  Liturgy ;  for  when  God  appoints  means  of  grace,  they 
are  the  means. 

I  do  not  see  how  any  one  can  escape  from  this  plain  view  of  the 
subject,  except  (as  I  have  already  hinted)  by  declaring  that  the  words 
do  not  mean  all  that  they  say.  But  only  reflect  what  a  most  un- 
seemly time  for  random  words  is  that  in  which  ministers  are  set 
apart  for  their  office.  Do  we  not  adopt  a  Liturgy  in  order  to  hinder 
inconsiderate  idle  language,  and  shall  we,  in  the  most  sacred  of  all 
services,  write  down,  subscribe,  and  use  again  and  again  forms  of 
speech  which  have  not  been  weighed,  and  cannot  be  taken  strictly  ? 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  103 

Therefore,  my  dear  brethren,  act  up  to  your  professions.  Let  it 
not  be  said  that  you  have  neglected  a  gift ;  for  if  you  have  the  Spirit 
of  the  Apostles  on  you,  surely  this  is  a  great  gift.  "  Stir  up  the  gift 
of  God  which  is  in  you."  Make  much  of  it.  Show  your  value  of 
it.  Keep  it  before  your  minds  as  an  honourable  badge,  far  higher 
than  that  secular  respectability,  or  cultivation,  or  polish,  or  learning, 
or  rank,  which  gives  you  a  hearing  with  the  many.  Tell  them  of 
your  gift.  The  times  will  soon  drive  you  to  do  this,  if  you  mean  to 
be  still  anything.  But  wait  not  for  the  times.  Do  not  be  com- 
pelled, by  the  world's  forsaking  you,  to  recur  as  if  unwillingly  to  the 
high  source  of  your  authority.  Speak  out  now,  before  you  are 
forced,  both  as  glorying  in  your  privilege  and  to  insure  your  rightful 
honour  from  your  people.  A  notion  has  gone  abroad  that  they  can 
take  away  your  power.  They  think  they  have  given  and  can  take  it 
away.  They  think  it  lies  in  the  Church  property,  and  they  know 
that  they  have  politically  the  power  to  confiscate  that  property. 
They  have  been  deluded  into  a  notion  that  present  palpable  useful- 
ness, produceable  results,  acceptableness  to  your  flocks,  that  these 
and  such  like  are  the  tests  of  your  divine  commission.  Enlighten 
them  in  this  matter.  Exalt  our  Holy  Fathers  the  bishops,  as  the 
representatives  of  the  Apostles,  and  the  Angels  of  the  Churches ;  and 
magnify  your  office,  as  being  ordained  by  them  to  take  part  in  their 
Ministry. 

But,  if  you  will  not  adopt  my  view  of  the  subject,  which  I  offer 
to  you,  not  doubtingly,  yet  (I  hope)  respectfully,  at  all  events, 
CHOOSE  YOUR  SIDE.  To  remain  neuter  much  longer  will  be 
itself  to  take  a  part.  Choose  your  side  ;  since  side  you  shortly 
must,  with  one  or  other  party,  even  though  you  do  nothing.  Fear 
to  be  of  those  whose  line  is  decided  for  them  by  chance  circum- 
stances, and  who  may  perchance  find  themselves  with  the  enemies 
of  Christ,  while  they  think  but  to  remove  themselves  from  worldly 
politics.  Such  abstinence  is  impossible  in  troublous  times.  HE 

THAT    IS    NOT  WITH    ME    IS    AGAINST    ME,  AND    HE    THAT    GATHERETH 
NOT  WITH  ME  SCATTERETH  ABROAD. 

While  Mr.  Palmer  was  working  at  the  Association 
and  the  Address,  Mr.  Newman  with  his  friends  was 
sending  forth  the  Tracts,  one  after  another,  in  rapid 
succession,  through  the  autumn  and  winter  of  1833. 


104  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

They  were  short  papers,  in  many  cases  mere  short 
notes,  on  the  great  questions  which  had  suddenly 
sprung  into  such  interest,  and  were  felt  to  be  full  of 
momentous  consequence, —  the  true  and  essential 
nature  of  the  Christian  Church,  its  relation  to  the 
primitive  ages,  its  authority  and  its  polity  and  govern- 
ment, the  current  objections  to  its  claims  in  England, 
to  its  doctrines  and  its  services,  the  length  of  the 
prayers,  the  Burial  Service,  the  proposed  alterations 
in  the  Liturgy,  the  neglect  of  discipline,  the  sins  and 
corruptions  of  each  branch  of  Christendom.  The 
same  topics  were  enforced  and  illustrated  again  and 
again  as  the  series  went  on  ;  and  then  there  came 
extracts  from  English  divines,  like  Bishop  Beveridge, 
Bishop  Wilson,  and  Bishop  Cosin,  and  under  the  title 
"  Records  of  the  Church,"  translations  from  the  early 
Fathers,  Ignatius,  Justin,  Irenseus,  and  others.  Mr. 
Palmer  contributed  to  one  of  these  papers,  and  later 
on  Mr.  Perceval  wrote  two  or  three ;  but  for  the 
most  part  these  early  Tracts  were  written  by  Mr. 
Newman,  though  Mr.  Keble  and  one  or  two  others 
also  helped.  Afterwards,  other  writers  joined  in  the 
series.  They  were  at  first  not  only  published  with  a 
notice  that  any  one  might  republish  them  with  any 
alterations  he  pleased,  but  they  were  distributed  by 
zealous  coadjutors,  ready  to  take  any  trouble  in  the 
cause.  Mr.  Mozley  has  described  how  he  rode  about 
Northamptonshire,  from  parsonage  to  parsonage,  with 
bundles  of  the  Tracts.  The  Apologia  records  the 
same  story.  "  I  called  upon  clergy,"  says  the  writer, 
"in  various  parts  of  the  country,  whether  I  was 
acquainted  with  them  or  not,  and  I  attended  at  the 
houses  of  friends  where  several  of  them  were  from 
time  to  time  assembled.  I  did  not  care  whether 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  105 

my  visits  were  made  to  High  Church  or  Low  Church  : 
I  wished  to  make  a  strong  pull  in  union  with  all  who 
were  opposed  to  the  principles  of  Liberalism,  whoever 
they  might  be."  He  adds  that  he  does  not  think 
that  much  came  of  these  visits,  or  of  letters  written 
with  the  same  purpose,  "except  that  they  advertised 
the  fact  that  a  rally  in  favour  of  the  Church  was 
commencing." 

The  early  Tracts  were  intended  to  startle  the 
world,  and  they  succeeded  in  doing  so.  Their  very 
form,  as  short  earnest  leaflets,  was  perplexing ;  for 
they  came,  not  from  the  class  of  religionists  who 
usually  deal  in  such  productions,  but  from  distinguished 
University  scholars,  picked  men  of  a  picked  college  ; 
and  from  men,  too,  who  as  a  school  were  the  repre- 
sentatives of  soberness  and  self-control  in  religious 
feeling  and  language,  and  whose  usual  style  of  writ- 
ing was  specially  marked  by  its  severe  avoidance  of 
excitement  and  novelty ;  the  school  from  which  had 
lately  come  the  Christian  Year,  with  its  memorable 
motto  "  In  quietness  and  confidence  shall  be  your 
strength."  Their  matter  was  equally  unusual.  Un- 
doubtedly they  "  brought  strange  things  to  the  ears" 
of  their  generation.  To  Churchmen  now  these 
"strange  things"  are  such  familiar  commonplaces, 
that  it  is  hard  to  realise  how  they  should  have  made 
so  much  stir.  But  they  were  novelties,  partly  auda- 
cious, partly  unintelligible,  then.  The  strong  and 
peremptory  language  of  the  Tracts,  their  absence  of 
qualifications  or  explanations,  frightened  friends  like 
Mr.  Palmer,  who,  so  far,  had  no  ground  to  quarrel 
with  their  doctrine,  and  he  wished  them  to  be  dis- 
continued. The  story  went  that  one  of  the  bishops, 
on  reading  one  of  the  Tracts  on  the  Apostolical  Sue- 


106  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

cession,  could  not  make  up  his  mind  whether  he  held 
the  doctrine  or  not.  They  fell  on  a  time  of  profound 
and  inexcusable  ignorance  on  the  subjects  they 
discussed,  and  they  did  not  spare  it.  The  cry  of 
Romanism  was  inevitable,  and  was  soon  raised,  though 
there  was  absolutely  nothing  in  them  but  had  the 
indisputable  sanction  of  the  Prayer  Book,  and  of  the 
most  authoritative  Anglican  divines.  There  wras  no 
Romanism  in  them,  nor  anything  that  showed  a 
tendency  to  it.  But  custom,  and  the  prevalence  of 
other  systems  and  ways,  and  the  interest  of  later 
speculations,  and  the  slackening  of  professional  reading 
and  scholarship  in  the  Church,  had  made  their  readers 
forget  some  of  the  most  obvious  facts  in  Church 
history,  and  the  most  certain  Church  principles  ;  and 
men  were  at  sea  as  to  what  they  knew  or  believed 
on  the  points  on  which  the  Tracts  challenged  them. 
The  scare  was  not  creditable  ;  it  was  like  the  Italian 
scare  about  cholera  with  its  quarantines  and  fumiga- 
tions ;  but  it  was  natural.  The  theological  knowledge 
and  learning  were  wanting  which  would  have  been 
familiar  with  the  broad  line  of  difference  between  what 
is  Catholic  and  what  is  specially  Roman.  There  were 
many  whose  teaching  was  impugned,  for.  it  was  really 
Calvinist  or  Zwinglian,  and  not  Anglican.  There 
were  hopeful  and  ambitious  theological  Liberals,  who 
recognised  in  that  appeal  to  Anglicanism  the  most 
effective  counter-stroke  to  their  own  schemes  and 
theories.  There  were  many  whom  the  movement 
forced  to  think,  who  did  not  want  such  addition  to 
their  responsibilities.  It  cannot  be  thought  surprising 
that  the  new  Tracts  were  received  with  surprise, 
dismay,  ridicule,  and  indignation.  But  they  also  at 
once  called  forth  a  response  of  eager  sympathy  from 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  107 

numbers  to  whom  they  brought  unhoped-for  relief 
and  light  in  a  day  of  gloom,  of  rebuke  and  blasphemy. 
Mr.  Keble,  in  the  preface  to  his  famous  assize  sermon, 
had  hazarded  the  belief  that  there  were  "  hundreds, 
nay,  thousands  of  Christians,  and  that  there  soon  will 
be  tens  of  thousands,  unaffectedly  anxious  to  be  rightly 
guided  "  in  regard  to  subjects  that  concern  the  Church. 
The  belief  was  soon  justified. 

When  the  first  forty-six  Tracts  were  collected  into 
a  volume  towards  the  end  of  1834,  the  following 
"  advertisement "  explaining  their  nature  and  objects 
was  prefixed  to  it.  It  is  a  contemporary  and  authori- 
tative account  of  what  was  the  mind  of  the  leaders  of 
the  movement ;  and  it  has  a  significance  beyond  the 
occasion  which  prompted  it. 

The  following  Tracts  were  published  with  the  object  of  con- 
tributing something  towards  the  practical  revival  of  doctrines,  which, 
although  held  by  the  great  divines  of  our  Church,  at  present  have 
become  obsolete  with  the  majority  of  her  members,  and  are  with- 
drawn from  public  view  even  by  the  more  learned  and  orthodox 
few  who  still  adhere  to  them.  The  Apostolic  succession,  the  Holy 
Catholic  Church,  were  principles  of  action  in  the  minds  of  our 
predecessors  of  the  seventeenth  century ;  but,  in  proportion  as  the 
maintenance  of  the  Church  has  been  secured  by  law,  her  ministers 
have  been  under  the  temptation  of  leaning  on  an  arm  of  flesh  instead 
of  her  own  divinely-provided  discipline,  a  temptation  increased  by 
political  events  and  arrangements  which  need  not  here  be  more  than 
alluded  to.  A  lamentable  increase  of  sectarianism  has  followed ; 
being  occasioned  (in  addition  to  other  more  obvious  causes),  first, 
by  the  cold  aspect  which  the  new  Church  doctrines  have  presented 
to  the  religious  sensibilities  of  the  mind,  next  to  their  meagreness 
in  suggesting  motives  to  restrain  it  from  seeking  out  a  more  in- 
fluential discipline.  Doubtless  obedience  to  the  law  of  the  land, 
and  the  careful  maintenance  of  "  decency  and  order  "  (the  topics  in 
usage  among  us),  are  plain  duties  of  the  Gospel,  and  a  reasonable 
ground  for  keeping  in  communion  with  the  Established  Church  ; 


io8  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

yet,  if  Providence  has  graciously  provided  for  our  weakness  more 
interesting  and  constraining  motives,  it  is  a  sin  thanklessly  to 
neglect  them ;  just  as  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  rest  the  duties  of 
temperance  or  justice  on  the  mere  law  of  natural  religion,  when 
they  are  mercifully  sanctioned  in  the  Gospel  by  the  more  winning 
authority  of  our  Saviour  Christ.  Experience  has  shown  the  in- 
efficacy  of  the  mere  injunctions  of  Church  order,  however  scripturally 
enforced,  in  restraining  from  schism  the  awakened  and  anxious 
sinner;  who  goes  to  a  dissenting  preacher  "because"  (as  he  ex- 
presses it)  "  he  gets  good  from  him " :  and  though  he  does  not 
stand  excused  in  God's  sight  for  yielding  to  the  temptation,  surely 
the  ministers  of  the  Church  are  not  blameless  if,  by  keeping  back 
the  more  gracious  and  consoling  truths  provided  for  the  little  ones 
of  Christ,  they  indirectly  lead  him  into  it.  Had  he  been  taught  as 
a  child,  that  the  Sacraments,  not  preaching,  are  the  sources  of 
Divine  Grace ;  that  the  Apostolical  ministry  had  a  virtue  in  it  which 
went  out  over  the  whole  Church,  when  sought  by  the  prayer  of  faith  ; 
that  fellowship  with  it  was  a  gift  and  privilege,  as  well  as  a  duty, 
we  could  not  have  had  so  many  wanderers  from  our  fold,  nor 
so  many  cold  hearts  within  it. 

This  instance  may  suggest  many  others  of  the  superior  influence 
of  an  apostolical  over  a  mere  secular  method  of  teaching.  The 
awakened  mind  knows  its  wants,  but  cannot  provide  for  them  ;  and 
in  its  hunger  will  feed  upon  ashes,  if  it  cannot  obtain  the  pure  milk 
of  the  word.  Methodism  and  Popery  are  in  different  ways  the 
refuge  of  those  whom  the  Church  stints  of  the  gifts  of  grace ;  they 
are  the  foster-mothers  of  abandoned  children.  The  neglect  of  the 
daily  service,  the  desecration  of  festivals,  the  Eucharist  scantily 
administered,  insubordination  permitted  in  all  ranks  of  the  Church, 
orders  and  offices  imperfectly  developed,  the  want  of  societies  for 
particular  religious  objects,  and  the  like  deficiencies,  lead  the  feverish 
mind,  desirous  of  a  vent  to  its  feelings,  and  a  stricter  rule  of  life,  to 
the  smaller  religious  communities,  to  prayer  and  Bible  meetings,  and 
ill-advised  institutions  and  societies,  on  the  one  hand,  on  the  other, 
to  the  solemn  and  captivating  services  by  which  Popery  gains  its 
proselytes.  Moreover,  the  multitude  of  men  cannot  teach  or  guide 
themselves ;  and  an  injunction  given  them  to  depend  on  their 
private  judgment,  cruel  in  itself,  is  doubly  hurtful,  as  throwing  them 
on  such  teachers  as  speak  daringly  and  promise  largely,  and  not 
only  aid  but  supersede  individual  exertion. 


vi  THE  OXFORD  TRACTS  109 

These  remarks  may  serve  as  a  clue,  for  those  who  care  to 
pursue  it,  to  the  views  which  have  led  to  the  publication  of  the 
following  Tracts.  The  Church  of  Christ  was  intended  to  cope  with 
human  nature  in  all  its  forms,  and  surely  the  gifts  vouchsafed  it  are 
adequate  for  that  gracious  purpose.  There  are  zealous  sons  and 
servants  of  her  English  branch,  who  see  with  sorrow  that  she  is 
defrauded  of  her  full  usefulness  by  particular  theories  and  principles 
of  the  present  age,  which  interfere  with  the  execution  of  one  portion 
of  her  commission ;  and  while  they  consider  that  the  revival  of  this 
portion  of  truth  is  especially  adapted  to  break  up  existing  parties  in 
the  Church,  and  to  form  instead  a  bond  of  union  among  all  who 
love  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  sincerity,  they  believe  that  nothing 
but  these  neglected  doctrines,  faithfully  preached,  will  repress  that 
extension  of  Popery,  for  which  the  ever  multiplying  divisions  of  the 
religious  world  are  too  clearly  preparing  the  way. 

Another  publication  ought  to  be  noticed,  a  result 
of  the  Hadleigh  meeting,  which  exhibited  the  leading 
ideas  of  the  conference,  and  especially  of  the  more 
"  conservative  "  members  of  it.  This  was  a  little  work 
in  question  and  answer,  called  the  "  Churchman's 
Manual,"  drawn  up  in  part  some  time  before  the 
meeting  by  Mr.  Perceval,  and  submitted  to  the  re- 
vision of  Mr.  Rose  and  Mr.  Palmer.  It  was  intended 
to  be  a  supplement  to  the  "  Church  Catechism,"  as  to 
the  nature  and  claims  of  the  Church  and  its  Ministers. 
It  is  a  terse,  clear,  careful,  and,  as  was  inevitable,  rather 
dry  summary  of  the  Anglican  theory,  and  of  the 
position  which  the  English  Church  holds  to  the 
Roman  Church,  and  to  the  Dissenters.  It  was  further 
revised  at  the  Conference,  and  "some  important 
suggestions  were  made  by  Froude " ;  and  then  Mr. 
Perceval,  who  had  great  hopes  from  the  publication, 
and  spared  himself  no  pains  to  make  it  perfect,  sub- 
mitted it  for  revision  and  advice  to  a  number  of 
representative  Churchmen.  The  Scotch  Bishops 


i io  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  vi 

whom  he  consulted  were  warm  in  approval,  especially 
the  venerable  and  saintly  Bishop  Jolly  ;  as  were  also 
a  number  of  men  of  weight  and  authority  in  England  : 
Judge  Allan  Park,  Joshua  Watson,  Mr.  Sikes  of 
Guilsborough,  Mr.  Churton  of  Crayke,  Mr.  H.  H. 
Norris,  Dr.  Wordsworth,  and  Dr.  Routh.  It  was 
then  laid  before  the  Archbishop  for  correction,  or, 
if  desirable,  suppression ;  and  for  his  sanction  if 
approved.  The  answer  was  what  might  have  been 
expected,  that  there  was  no  objection  to  it,  but 
that  official  sanction  must  be  declined  on  general 
grounds.  After  all  this  Mr.  Perceval  not  unnaturally 
claimed  for  it  special  importance.  It  was  really,  he 
observed,  the  "first  Tract,"  systematically  put  forth, 
and  its  preparation  "  apparently  gave  rise "  to  the 
series  ;  and  it  was  the  only  one  which  received  the 
approval  of  all  immediately  concerned  in  the  move- 
ment. "  The  care  bestowed  on  it,"  he  says,  "probably 
exceeds  that  which  any  theological  publication  in  the 
English  communion  received  for  a  long  time "  ;  and 
further,  it  shows  "  that  the  foundation  of  the  move- 
ment with  which  Mr.  Rose  was  connected,  was  laid 
with  all  the  care  and  circumspection  that  reason  could 
well  suggest."  It  appears  to  have  had  a  circulation, 
but  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  it  had  any  con- 
siderable influence,  one  way  or  other,  on  opinion  in 
the  Church.  When  it  was  referred  to  in  after-years 
by  Mr.  Perceval  in  his  own  vindication,  it  was  almost 
forgotten.  More  interesting,  if  not  more  important, 
Tracts  had  thrown  it  into  the  shade. 


CHAPTER    VII 

THE    TRACTARIANS 

THUS  had  been  started — hurriedly  perhaps,  yet  not 
without  counting  the  cost — a  great  enterprise,  which 
had  for  its  object  to  rouse  the  Church  from  its  lethargy, 
and  to  strengthen  and  purify  religion,  by  making  it 
deeper  and  more  real ;  and  they  who  had  put 
their  hands  to  the  plough  were  not  to  look  back  any 
more.  It  was  not  a  popular  appeal ;  it  addressed 
itself  not  to  the  many  but  to  the  few  ;  it  sought  to 
inspire  and  to  teach  the  teachers.  There  was  no 
thought  as  yet  of  acting  on  the  middle  classes,  or  on 
the  ignorance  and  wretchedness  of  the  great  towns, 
though  Newman  had  laid  down  that  the  Church 
must  rest  on  the  people,  and  Froude  looked  forward 
to  colleges  of  unmarried  priests  as  the  true  way  to 
evangelise  the  crowds.  There  was  no  display  about 
this  attempt,  no  eloquence,  nothing  attractive  in  the 
way  of  original  speculation  or  sentimental  interest.  It 
was  suspicious,  perhaps  too  suspicious,  of  the  excite- 
ment and  want  of  soberness,  almost  inevitable  in 
strong  appeals  to  the  masses  of  mankind.  It  brought 
no  new  doctrine,  but  professed  to  go  back  to  what 
was  obvious  and  old  -  fashioned  and  commonplace. 
It  taught  people  to  think  less  of  preaching  than  of 


112  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

what  in  an  age  of  excitement  were  invidiously  called 
forms — of  the  sacraments  and  services  of  the  Church. 
It  discouraged,  even  to  the  verge  of  an  intended  dry  ness, 
all  that  was  showy,  all  that  in  thought  or  expression 
or  manner  it  condemned  under  the  name  of  "  flash." 
It  laid  stress  on  the  exercise  of  an  inner  and  unseen 
self-discipline,  and  the  cultivation  of  the  less  interest- 
ing virtues  of  industry,  humility,  self- distrust,  and 
obedience.  If  from  its  writers  proceeded  works 
which  had  impressed  people  —  a  volume  like  the 
Christian  Year,  poems  original  in  their  force  and 
their  tenderness,  like  some  of  those  in  the  Lyra 
Apostolica,  sermons  which  arrested  the  hearers  by 
their  keenness  and  pathetic  undertone — the  force  of 
all  this  was  not  the  result  of  literary  ambition  and 
effort,  but  the  reflexion,  unconscious,  unsought,  of 
thought  and  feeling  that  could  not  otherwise  express 
itself,  and  that  was  thrown  into  moulds  shaped  by 
habitual  refinement  and  cultivated  taste.  It  was  from 
the  first  a  movement  from  which,  as  much  by  instinct 
and  temper  as  by  deliberate  intention,  self-seeking  in 
all  its  forms  was  excluded.  Those  whom  it  influenced 
looked  not  for  great  things  for  themselves,  nor  thought 
of  making  a  mark  in  the  world. 

The  first  year  after  the  Hadleigh  meeting  (1834) 
passed  uneventfully.  The  various  addresses  in  which 
Mr.  Palmer  was  interested,  the  election  and  installation 
of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  as  Chancellor,  the  enthusiasm 
and  hopes  called  forth  by  the  occasion,  were  public 
and  prominent  matters.  The  Tracts  were  steadily 
swelling  in  number ;  the  busy  distribution  of  them  had 
ceased,  and  they  had  begun  to  excite  interest  and  give 
rise  to  questions.  Mr.  Palmer,  who  had  never  liked 
the  Tracts,  became  more  uneasy ;  yet  he  did  not 


•vii  THE  TRACTARIANS  113 

altogether  refuse  to  contribute  to  them.  Others  gave 
their  help,  among  them  Mr.  Perceval,  Froude,  the 
two  Kebles,  and  Mr.  Newman's  friend,  a  layman,  Mr. 
J.  Bowden  ;  some  of  the  younger  scholars  furnished 
translations  from  the  Fathers ;  but  the  bulk  and 
most  forcible  of  the  Tracts  were  still  the  work  of  Mr. 
Newman.  But  the  Tracts  were  not  the  most  powerful 
instruments  in  drawing  sympathy  to  the  movement. 
None  but  those  who  remember  them  can  adequately 
estimate  the  effect  of  Mr.  Newman's  four  o'clock 
sermons  at  St.  Mary's.1  The  world  knows  them,  has 
heard  a  great  deal  about  them,  has  passed  its  various 
judgments  on  them.  But  it  hardly  realises  that  with- 
out those  sermons  the  movement  might  never  have 
gone  on,  certainly  would  never  have  been  what  it  was. 
Even  people  who  heard  them  continually,  and  felt 
them  to  be  different  from  any  other  sermons,  hardly 
estimated  their  real  power,  or  knew  at  the  time  the 
influence  which  the  sermons  were  having  upon  them. 
Plain,  direct,  unornamented,  clothed  in  English  that 
was  only  pure  and  lucid,  free  from  any  faults  of  taste, 
strong  in  their  flexibility  and  perfect  command  both 
of  language  and  thought,  they  were  the  expression 
of  a  piercing  and  large  insight  into  character  and 
conscience  and  motives,  of  a  sympathy  at  once  most 
tender  and  most  stern  with  the  tempted  and  the 
wavering,  of  an  absolute  and  burning  faith  in  God 
and  His  counsels,  in  His  love,  in  His  judgments,  in 
the  awful  glory  of  His  generosity  and  His  magnificence. 
They  made  men  think  of  the  things  which  the  preacher 
spoke  of,  and  not  of  the  sermon  or  the  preacher. 
Since  1828  this  preaching  had  been  going  on  at.  St. 
Mary's,  growing  in  purpose  and  directness  as  the 

1  See  note  at  the  end  of  this  chapter. 

I 


ii4  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

years  went  on,  though  it  could  hardly  be  more  intense 
than  in  some  of  its  earliest  examples.  While  men 
were  reading  and  talking  about  the  Tracts,  they  were 
hearing  the  sermons ;  and  in  the  sermons  they  heard 
the  living  meaning,  and  reason,  and  bearing  of  the 
Tracts,  their  ethical  affinities,  their  moral  standard. 
The  sermons  created  a  moral  atmosphere,  in  which 
men  judged  the  questions  in  debate.  It  was  no  dry 
theological  correctness  and  completeness  which  were 
sought  for.  No  love  of  privilege,  no  formal  hier- 
archical claims,  urged  on  the  writers.  What  they 
thought  in  danger,  what  they  aspired  to  revive  and 
save,  was  the  very  life  of  religion,  the  truth  and 
substance  of  all  that  makes  it  the  hope  of  human 
society. 

But  indeed,  by  this  time,  out  of  the  little  company 
of  friends  which  a  common  danger  and  a  common 
loyalty  to  the  Church  had  brought  together,  one,  Mr. 
Newman,  had  drawn  ahead,  and  was  now  in  the  front. 
Unsought  for,  as  the  Apologia  makes  so  clear — un- 
sought for,  as  the  contemporary  letters  of  observing 
friends  attest — unsought  for,  as  the  whole  tenor  of  his 
life  has  proved — the  position  of  leader  in  a  great  crisis 
came  to  him,  because  it  must  come.  He  was  not 
unconscious  that  in  Sicily,  as  he  had  felt  in  his  sick- 
ness, he  "had  a  work  to  do."  But  there  was  shyness 
and  self-distrust  in  his  nature  as  well  as  energy ;  and 
it  was  the  force  of  genius,  and  a  lofty  character, 
and  the  statesman's  eye,  taking  in  and  judging 
accurately  the  whole  of  a  complicated  scene,  which 
conferred  the  gifts,  and  imposed  inevitably  and 
without  dispute  the  obligations  and  responsibilities  of 
leadership.  Dr.  Pusey  of  course  was  a  friend  of  great 
account,  but  he  was  as  yet  in  the  background,  a 


vii  THE  TRACTARIANS  115 

venerated  and  rather  awful  person,  from  his  position 
not  mixing  in  the  easy  intercourse  of  common-room 
life,  but  to  be  consulted  on  emergencies.  Round  Mr. 
Newman  gathered,  with  a  curious  mixture  of  freedom, 
devotion,  and  awe — for,  with  unlimited  power  of 
sympathy,  he  was  exacting  and  even  austere  in  his 
friendships — the  best  men  of  his  college,  either  Fellows 
— R.  Wilberforce,  Thomas  Mozley,  Frederic  Rogers, 
J.  F.  Christie;  or  old  pupils — Henry  Wilberforce, 
R.  F.  Wilson,  William  Froude,  Robert  Williams, 
S.  F.  Wood,  James  Bliss,  James  Mozley  ;  and  in  addi- 
tion some  outsiders — Woodgate  of  St.  John's,  Isaac 
Williams  and  Copeland,  of  his  old  College,  Trinity. 
These,  members  of  his  intimate  circle,  were  bound  to 
him  not  merely  by  enthusiastic  admiration  and  confi- 
dence, but  by  a  tenderness  of  affection,  a  mixture  of  the 
gratitude  and  reliance  of  discipleship  with  the  warm 
love  of  friendship,  of  which  one  has  to  go  back  far  for 
examples,  and  which  has  had  nothing  like  it  in  our 
days  at  Oxford.  And  Newman  was  making  his  mark 
as  a  writer.  The  Arians,  though  an  imperfect  book, 
was  one  which,  for  originality  and  subtlety  of  thought, 
was  something  very  unlike  the  usual  theological  writ- 
ing of  the  day.  There  was  no  doubt  of  his  power, 
and  his  mind  was  brimming  over  with  ideas  on  the 
great  questions  which  were  rising  into  view.  It  was 
clear  to  all  who  knew  him  that  he  could  speak  on 
them  as  no  one  else  could. 

Towards  the  end  of  1834,  and  in  the  course  of 
1835,  an  event  happened  which  had  a  great  and  de- 
cisive influence  on  the  character  and  fortunes  of  the 
movement.  This  was  the  accession  to  it  of  Dr. 
Pusey.  He  had  looked  favourably  on  it  from  the 
first,  partly  from  his  friendship  with  Mr.  Newman, 


ii6  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

partly  from  the  workings  of  his  own  mind.  But  he 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  starting  of  it,  except  that 
he  early  contributed  an  elaborate  paper  on  "  Fasting." 
The  Oxford  branch  of  the  movement,  as  distinguished 
from  that  which  Mr.  Palmer  represented,  consisted  up 
to  1834  almost  exclusively  of  junior  men,  personal 
friends  of  Mr.  Newman,  and  most  of  them  Oriel  men. 
Mr.  Newman's  deep  convictions,  his  fiery  enthusiasm, 
had  given  the  Tracts  their  first  stamp  and  impress, 
and  had  sent  them  flying  over  the  country  among  the 
clergy  on  his  own  responsibility.  They  answered 
their  purpose.  They  led  to  widespread  and  some- 
times deep  searchings  of  heart ;  to  some  they  seemed 
to  speak  forth  what  had  been  long  dormant  within 
them,  what  their  minds  had  unconsciously  and 
vaguely  thought  and  longed  for ;  to  some  they 
seemed  a  challenge  pregnant  with  danger.  But  still 
they  were  but  an  outburst  of  individual  feeling  and 
zeal,  which,  if  nothing  more  came  of  its  fragmentary 
displays,  might  blaze  and  come  to  nothing.  There 
was  nothing  yet  which  spoke  outwardly  of  the  con- 
sistency and  weight  of  a  serious  attempt  to  influence 
opinion  and  to  produce  a  practical  and  lasting  effect  on 
the  generation  which  was  passing.  Cardinal  Newman, 
in  the  Apologia,  has  attributed  to  Dr.  Pusey's  un- 
reserved adhesion  to  the  cause  which  the  Tracts 
represented  a  great  change  in  regard  to  the  weight 
and  completeness  of  what  was  written  and  done.  "  Dr. 
Pusey,"  he  writes,  "gave  us  at  once  a  position  and  a 
name.  Without  him  we  should  have  had  no  chance, 
especially  at  the  early  date  of  1834,  of  making  any 
serious  resistance  to  the  liberal  aggression.  But  Dr. 
Pusey  was  a  Professor  and  Canon  of  Christ  Church  ; 
he  had  a  vast  influence  in  consequence  of  his  deep 


vii  THE  TRACTARIANS  117 

religious  seriousness,  the  munificence  of  his  charities, 
his  Professorship,  his  family  connexions,  and  his 
easy  relations  with  the  University  authorities.  He 
was  to  the  movement  all  that  Mr.  Rose  might  have 
been,  with  that  indispensable  addition,  which  was 
wanting  to  Mr.  Rose,  the  intimate  friendship  and  the 
familiar  daily  society  of  the  persons  who  had  com- 
menced it.  And  he  had  that  special  claim  on  their 
attachment  which  lies  in  the  living  presence  of  a 
faithful  and  loyal  affectionateness.  There  was  hence- 
forth a  man  who  could  be  the  head  and  centre  of  the 
zealous  people  in  every  part  of  the  country  who  were 
adopting  the  new  opinions ;  and  not  only  so,  but  there 
was  one  who  furnished  the  movement  with  a  front  to 
the  world,  and  gained  for  it  a  recognition  from  other 
parties  in  the  University."1 

This  is  not  too  much  to  say  of  the  effect  of  Dr. 
Pusey's  adhesion.  It  gave  the  movement  a  second 
head,  in  close  sympathy  with  its  original  leader,  but 
in  many  ways  very  different  from  him.  Dr.  Pusey 
became,  as  it  were,  its  official  chief  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world.  He  became  also,  in  a  remarkable  degree,  a 
guarantee  for  its  stability  and  steadiness  :  a  guarantee 
that  its  chiefs  knew  what  they  were  about,  and  meant 
nothing  but  what  was  for  the  benefit  of  the  English 
Church.  "He  was,"  we  read  in  the  Apologia,  "  a  man 
of  large  designs  ;  he  had  a  hopeful,  sanguine  mind  ;  he 
had  no  fear  of  others  ;  he  was  haunted  by  no  intel- 
lectual perplexities.  ...  If  confidence  in  his  position 
is  (as  it  is)  a  first  essential  in  the  leader  of  a  party,  Dr. 
Pusey  had  it."  An  inflexible  patience,  a  serene  com- 
posure, a  meek,  resolute  self-possession,  was  the  habit 
of  his  mind,  and  never  deserted  him  in  the  most  trying 

1  Apologia,  p.  136. 


Ii8  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

days.  He  never  for  an  instant,  as  the  paragraph  wit- 
nesses, wavered  or  doubted  about  the  position  of  the 
English  Church. 

He  was  eminently,  as  his  friend  justly  observes,  "  a 
man  of  large  designs."  It  is  doubtless  true,  as  the 
Apologia  goes  on  to  say,  that  it  was  due  to  the  place 
which  he  now  took  in  the  movement  that  great  changes 

o  O 

were  made  in  the  form  and  character  of  the  Tracts. 
To  Dr.  Pusey's  mind,  accustomed  to  large  and  exhaust- 
ive theological  reading,  they  wanted  fulness,  complete- 
ness, the  importance  given  by  careful  arrangement  and 
abundant  knowledge.  It  was  not  for  nothing  that  he 
had  passed  an  apprenticeship  among  the  divines  of 
Germany,  and  been  the  friend  and  correspondent  of 
Tholuck,  Schleiermacher,  Ewald,  and  Sack.  He  knew 
the  meaning  of  real  learning.  In  controversy  it  was 
his  sledge-hammer  and  battle-mace,  and  he  had  the 
strong  and  sinewy  hand  to  use  it  with  effect.  He 
observed  that  when  attention  had  been  roused  to  the 
ancient  doctrines  of  the  Church  by  the  startling  and 
peremptory  language  of  the  earlier  Tracts,  fairness  and 
justice  demanded  that  these  doctrines  should  be  fully 
and  carefully  explained  and  defended  against  misrepre- 
sentation and  mistake.  Forgetfulness  and  ignorance 
had  thrown  these  doctrines  so  completely  into  the 
shade  that,  identified  as  they  were  with  the  best  English 
divinity,  they  now  wore  the  air  of  amazing  novelties  ; 
and  it  was  only  due  to  honest  inquirers  to  satisfy  them 
with  solid  and  adequate  proof.  "  Dr.  Pusey's  influence 
was  felt  at  once.  He  saw  that  there  ought  to  be 
more  sobriety,  more  gravity,  more  careful  pains,  more 
sense  of  responsibility  in  the  Tracts  and  in  the  whole 
movement."  At  the  end  of  1835  Dr.  Pusey  gave  an 
example  of  what  he  meant.  In  place  of  the  "  short  and 


vii  THE  TRACTARIANS  119 

incomplete  papers,"  such  as  the  earlier  Tracts  had 
been,  Nos.  67,  68,  and  69  formed  the  three  parts  of 
a  closely-printed  pamphlet  of  more  than  300  pages.1 
It  was  a  treatise  on  Baptism,  perhaps  the  most  elaborate 
that  has  yet  appeared  in  the  English  language.  "  It  is 
to  be  regarded,"  says  the  advertisement  to  the  second 
volume  of  the  Tracts,  "  not  as  an  inquiry  into  a  single 
or  isolated  doctrine,  but  as  a  delineation  and  serious 
examination  of  a  modern  system  of  theology,  of  exten- 
sive popularity  and  great  speciousness,  in  its  elementary 
and  characteristic  principles."  The  Tract  on  Baptism 
was  like  the  advance  of  a  battery  of  heavy  artillery  on 
a  field  where  the  battle  has  been  hitherto  carried  on  by 
skirmishing  and  musketry.  It  altered  the  look  of  things 
and  the  condition  of  the  fighting.  After  No.  67  the 
earlier  form  of  the  Tracts  appeared  no  more.  Except 
two  or  three  reprints  from  writers  like  Bishop  Wilson, 
the  Tracts  from  No.  70  to  No.  90  were  either  grave  and 
carefully  worked  out  essays  on  some  question  arising 
out  of  the  discussions  of  the  time,  or  else  those 
ponderous  catena  of  patristic  or  Anglican  divinity,  by 
which  the  historical  continuity  and  Church  authority  of 
various  points  of  doctrine  were  established. 

Dr.  Pusey  was  indeed  a  man  of  "large  designs." 
The  vision  rose  before  him  of  a  revived  and  instructed 
Church,  earnest  in  purpose  and  strict  in  life,  and  of 
a  great  Christian  University  roused  and  quickened  to 
a  sense  of  its  powers  and  responsibilities.  He  thought 
of  the  enormous  advantages  offered  by  its  magnificent 
foundations  for  serious  study  and  the  production  of 
works  for  which  time  and  deep  learning  and  continuous 
labour  were  essential.  Such  works,  in  the  hands  of 
single-minded  students,  living  lives  of  simplicity  and 

1  It  swelled  in  the  second  edition  to  400  pages. 


120  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

hard  toil,  had  in  the  case  of  the  Portroyalists,  the 
Oratorians,  and  above  all,  the  Benedictines  of  St. 
Maur,  splendidly  redeemed  the  Church  of  France,  in 
otherwise  evil  days,  from  the  reproach  of  idleness  and 
self-indulgence.  He  found  under  his  hand  men  who 
had  in  them  something  of  the  making  of  students  ;  and 
he  hoped  to  see  college  fellowships  filled  more  and 
more  by  such  men,  and  the  life  of  a  college  fellow 
more  and  more  recognised  as  that  of  a  man  to  whom 
learning,  and  especially  sacred  learning,  was  his  call 
and  sufficient  object,  as  pastoral  or  educational  work 
might  be  the  call  of  others.  Where  fellowships  were 
not  to  be  had,  he  encouraged  such  men  to  stay  up  in 
Oxford  ;  he  took  them  into  his  own  house  ;  later,  he 
tried  a  kind  of  hall  to  receive  them.  And  by  way  of 
beginning  at  once,  and  giving  them  something  to  do, 
he  planned  on  a  large  scale  a  series  of  translations  and 
also  editions  of  the  Fathers.  It  was  announced,  with 
an  elaborate  prospectus,  in  1836,  under  the  title,  in 
conformity  with  the  usage  of  the  time,  which  had 
Libraries  of  Useful  Knowledge,  etc.,  of  a  Library  of 
Fathers  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  anterior  to  the 
Division  of  the  East  and  West,  under  the  editorship  of 
Dr.  Pusey,  Mr.  Keble,  and  Mr.  Newman.  It  was 
dedicated  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  had 
a  considerable  number  of  Bishops  among  its  subscribers. 
Down  to  a  very  late  date,  the  Library  of  the  Fathers, 
in  which  Charles  Marriott  came  to  take  a  leading  part, 
was  a  matter  of  much  concern  to  Dr.  Pusey.  And  to 
bring  men  together,  and  to  interest  them  in  theological 
subjects,  he  had  evening  meetings  at  his  own  house, 
where  papers  were  read  and  discussed.  "Some 
persons,"  writes  a  gossiping  chronicler  of  the  time,1 

1  Recollections  of  Oxford,  by  G.  V.  Cox,  p.  278. 


THE  TRACTARIANS 


"  thought  that  these  meetings  were  liable  to  the 
statute,  De  conventiculis  illicitis  reprimendisT  Some 
important  papers  were  the  result  of  these  meetings  ; 
but  the  meetings  themselves  were  irresistibly  sleepy, 
and  in  time  they  were  discontinued.  But  indefatigable 
and  powerful  in  all  these  beginnings  Dr.  Pusey  stirred 
men  to  activity  and  saw  great  ground  of  hope.  He 
was  prepared  for  opposition,  but  he  had  boundless 
reliance  on  his  friends  and  his  cause.  His  forecast  of 
the  future,  of  great  days  in  store  for  the  Church  of 
England,  was,  not  unreasonably,  one  of  great  promise. 
Ten  years  might  work  wonders.  The  last  fear  that 
occurred  to  him  was  that  within  ten  years  a  hopeless 
rift,  not  of  affection  but  of  conviction,  would  have  run 
through  that  company  of  friends,  and  parted  irrevocably 
their  course  and  work  in  life. 

NOTE   (vide  p.  113) 

The  subjoined  extracts  record  the  impression  made  by 
Mr.  Newman's  preaching  on  contemporaries  well  qualified  to 
judge,  and  standing  respectively  in  very  different  relations 
to  the  movement.  This  is  the  judgment  of  a  very  close 
observer,  and  very  independent  critic,  James  Mozley.  In 
an  article  in  the  Christian  Remembrancer,  January  1846 
(p.  169),  after  speaking  of  the  obvious  reasons  of  Mr. 
Newman's  influence,  he  proceeds  : — 

We  inquire  further,  and  we  find  that  this  influence  has  been  of  a 
peculiarly  ethical  and  inward  kind ;  that  it  has  touched  the  deepest 
part  of  our  minds,  and  that  the  great  work  on  which  it  has  been 
founded  is  a  practical,  religious  one — his  Sermons.  We  speak  not 
from  our  own  fixed  impression,  however  deeply  felt,  but  from  what 
we  have  heard  and  observed  everywhere,  from  the  natural,  incidental, 
unconscious  remarks  dropped  from  persons'  mouths,  and  evidently 
showing  what  they  thought  and  felt.  For  ourselves,  we  must  say, 


122  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

one  of  Mr.  Newman's  sermons  is  to  us  a  marvellous  production. 
It  has  perfect  power,  and  perfect  nature ;  but  the  latter  it  is  which 
makes  it  so  great.  A  sermon  of  Mr.  Newman's  enters  into  all  our 
feelings,  ideas,  modes  of  viewing  things.  He  wonderfully  realises  a 
state  of  mind,  enters  into  a  difficulty,  a  temptation,  a  disappointment, 
a  grief;  he  goes  into  the  different  turns  and  incidental,  unconscious 
symptoms  of  a  case,  with  notions  which  come  into  the  head  and  go 
out  again,  and  are  forgotten,  till  some  chance  recalls  them.  .  .  .  To 
take  the  first  instance  that  happens  to  occur  to  us  ...  we  have  often 
been  struck  by  the  keen  way  in  which  he  enters  into  a  regular 
tradesman's  vice — avarice,  fortune-getting,  amassing  capital,  and  so  on. 
This  is  not  a  temper  to  which  we  can  imagine  Mr.  Newman  ever 
having  felt  in  his  own  mind  even  the  temptation ;  but  he  under- 
stands it,  and  the  temptation  to  it,  as  perfectly  as  any  merchant 
could.  No  man  of  business  could  express  it  more  naturally,  more 
pungently,  more  ex  animo.  ...  So  with  the  view  that  worldly  men 
take  of  religion,  in  a  certain  sense,  he  quite  enters  into  it,  and  the 
world's  point  of  view :  he  sees,  with  a  regular  worldly  man's  eye, 
religion  vanishing  into  nothing,  and  becoming  an  unreality,  while 
the  visible  system  of  life  and  facts,  politics  and  society,  gets  more 
and  more  solid  and  grows  upon  him.  The  whole  influence  of  the 
world  on  the  imagination ;  the  weight  of  example ;  the  force  of 
repetition ;  the  way  in  which  maxims,  rules,  sentiments,  by  being 
simply  sounded  in  the  ear  from  day  to  day,  seem  to  prove  themselves, 
and  make  themselves  believed  by  being  often  heard, — every  part  of 
the  easy,  natural,  passive  process  by  which  a  man  becomes  a  man  of 
the  world  is  entered  into,  as  if  the  preacher  were  going  to  justify  or 
excuse  him,  rather  than  condemn  him.  Nay,  he  enters  deeply  into  what 
even  scepticism  has  to  say  for  itself;  he  puts  himself  into  the  infidel's 
state  of  mind,  in  which  the  world,  as  a  great  fact,  seems  to  give  the 
lie  to  all  religions,  converting  them  into  phenomena  which  counter- 
balance and  negative  each  other,  and  he  goes  down  into  that  lowest 
abyss  and  bottom  of  things,  at  which  the  intellect  undercuts  spiritual 
truth  altogether.  He  enters  into  the  ordinary  common  states  of 
mind  just  in  the  same  way.  He  is  most  consoling,  most  sym- 
pathetic. He  sets  before  persons  their  own  feelings  with  such  truth 
of  detail,  such  natural  expressive  touches,  that  they  seem  not  to 
be  ordinary  states  of  mind  which  everybody  has,  but  very  peculiar 
ones ;  for  he  and  the  reader  seem  to  be  the  only  two  persons  in  the 
world  that  have  them  in  common.  Here  is  the  point.  Persons 


THE  TRACTARIANS  123 


look  into  Mr.  Newman's  sermons  and  see  their  own  thoughts  in 
them.  This  is,  after  all,  what  as  much  as  anything  gives  a  book 
hold  upon  minds.  .  .  .  Wonderful  pathetic  power,  that  can  so 
intimately,  so  subtilely  and  kindly,  deal  with  the  soul ! — and  wonder- 
ful soul  that  can  be  so  dealt  with. 


Compare  with  this  the  judgment  pronounced  by  one  of 
quite  a  different  school,  the  late  Principal  Shairp  : — 

Both  Dr.  Pusey  and  Mr.  Keble  at  that  time  were  quite  second 
in  importance  to  Mr.  Newman.  The  centre  from  which  his  power 
went  forth  was  the  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's,  with  those  wonderful  after- 
noon sermons.  Sunday  after  Sunday,  year  by  year,  they  went  on, 
each  continuing  and  deepening  the  impression  produced  by  the 
last.  As  the  hour  interfered  with  the  dinner-hour  of  the  Colleges, 
most  men  preferred  a  warm  dinner  without  Newman's  sermon  to  a 
cold  one  with  it ;  so  the  audience  was  not  crowded — the  large 
church  little  more  than  half  filled.  The  service  was  very  simple, 
no  pomp,  no  ritualism ;  for  it  was  characteristic  of  the  leading  men 
of  the  movement  that  they  left  these  things  to  the  weaker  brethren. 
Their  thoughts,  at  all  events,  were  set  on  great  questions  which 
touched  the  heart  of  unseen  things.  About  the  service,  the  most 
remarkable  thing  was  the  beauty,  the  silver  intonation  of  Mr. 
Newman's  voice  as  he  read  the  lessons.  .  .  .  When  he  began  to 
preach,  a  stranger  was  not  likely  to  be  much  struck.  Here  was 
no  vehemence,  no  declamation,  no  show  of  elaborated  argument,  so 
that  one  who  came  prepared  to  hear  "a  great  intellectual  effort" 
was  almost  sure  to  go  away  disappointed.  Indeed,  we  believe  that 
if  he  had  preached  one  of  his  St.  Mary's  sermons  before  a  Scotch 
town  congregation,  they  would  have  thought  the  preacher  a  "  silly 
body."  .  .  .  Those  who  never  heard  him  might  fancy  that  his  ser- 
mons would  generally  be  about  apostolical  succession,  or  rights  of 
the  Church,  or  against  Dissenters.  Nothing  of  the  kind.  You 
might  hear  him  preach  for  weeks  without  an  allusion  to  these  things. 
What  there  was  of  High  Church  teaching  was  implied  rather  than 
enforced.  The  local,  the  temporary,  and  the  modern  were  ennobled 
by  the  presence  of  the  Catholic  truth  belonging  to  all  ages  that 
pervaded  the  whole.  His  power  showed  itself  chiefly  in  the  new 
and  unlooked-for  way  in  which  he  touched  into  life  old  truths, 


124  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

moral  or  spiritual,  which  all  Christians  acknowledge,  but  most  have 
ceased  to  feel — when  he  spoke  of  "  unreal  words,"  of  the  "  individu- 
ality of  the  soul,"  of  the  "  invisible  world,"  of  a  "  particular  Pro- 
vidence," or  again,  of  the  "  ventures  of  faith,"  "  warfare  the  condition 
of  victory,"  "the  Cross  of  Christ  the  measure  of  the  world,"  "the 
Church  a  Home  for  the  lonely."  As  he  spoke,  how  the  old  truth 
became  new ;  how  it  came  home  with  a  meaning  never  felt  before  ! 
He  laid  his  finger  how  gently,  yet  how  powerfully,  on  some  inner 
place  in  the  hearer's  heart,  and  told  him  things  about  himself  he 
had  never  known  till  then.  Subtlest  truths,  which  it  would  have 
taken  philosophers  pages  of  circumlocution  and  big  words  to  state, 
were  dropt  out  by  the  way  in  a  sentence  or  two  of  the  most  trans- 
parent Saxon.  What  delicacy  of  style,  yet  what  strength  !  how  simple, 
yet  how  suggestive  !  how  homely,  yet  how  refined  !  how  penetrating, 
yet  how  tender-hearted  !  If  now  and  then  there  was  a  forlorn  under- 
tone which  at  the  time  seemed  inexplicable,  you  might  be  perplexed 
at  the  drift  of  what  he  said,  but  you  felt  all  the  more  drawn  to  the 
speaker.  .  .  .  After  hearing  these  sermons  you  might  come  away  still 
not  believing  the  tenets  peculiar  to  the  High  Church  system ;  but 
you  would  be  harder  than  most  men,  if  you  did  not  feel  more  than 
ever  ashamed  of  coarseness,  selfishness,  worldliness,  if  you  did  not 
feel  the  things  of  faith  brought  closer  to  the  soul. — -John  Keble,  by 
J.  C.  Shairp,  Professor  of  Humanity,  St.  Andrews  (1866),  pp.  12-17. 


I  venture  to  add  the  judgment  of  another  contemporary, 
on  the  effect  of  this  preaching,  from  the  Reminiscences  of 
Sir  F.  Doyle,  p.  145  : — 

That  great  man's  extraordinary  genius  drew  all  those  within 
his  sphere,  like  a  magnet,  to  attach  themselves  to  him  and  his 
doctrines.  Nay,  before  he  became  a  Romanist,  what  we  may  call 
his  mesmeric  influence  acted  not  only  on  his  Tractarian  adherents, 
but  even  in  some  degree  on  outsiders  like  myself.  Whenever  I  was 
at  Oxford,  I  used  to  go  regularly  on  Sunday  afternoons  to  listen  to 
his  sermon  at  St.  Mary's,  and  I  have  never  heard  such  preaching 
since.  I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  a  mere  fancy  of  mine,  or 
whether  those  who  know  him  better  will  accept  and  endorse  my 
belief,  that  one  element  of  his  wonderful  power  showed  itself  after 
this  fashion.  He  always  began  as  if  he  had  determined  to  set  forth 


vii  THE  TRACTARIANS  125 

his  idea  of  the  truth  in  the  plainest  and  simplest  language — language, 
as  men  say,  "intelligible  to  the  meanest  understanding."  But  his 
ardent  zeal  and  fine  poetical  imagination  were  not  thus  to  be  con- 
trolled. As  I  hung  upon  his  words,  it  seemed  to  me  as  if  I  could 
trace  behind  his  will,  and  pressing,  so  to  speak,  against  it,  a  rush  of 
thoughts,  of  feelings  which  he  kept  struggling  to  hold  back,  but  in 
the  end  they  were  generally  too  strong  for  him,  and  poured  themselves 
out  in  a  torrent  of  eloquence  all  the  more  impetuous  from  having 
been  so  long  repressed.  The  effect  of  these  outbursts  was  irre- 
sistible, and  carried  his  hearers  beyond  themselves  at  once.  Even 
when  his  efforts  of  self-restraint  were  more  successful,  those  very 
efforts  gave  a  life  and  colour  to  his  style  which  riveted  the  attention 
of  all  within  the  reach  of  his  voice.  Mr.  Justin  McCarthy,  in  his 
History  of  Our  Own  Times,  says  of  him  :  "  In  all  the  arts  that 
make  a  great  preacher  or  orator,  Cardinal  Newman  was  deficient. 
His  manner  was  constrained  and  ungraceful,  and  even  awkward ;  his 
voice  was  thin  and  weak,  his  bearing  was  not  at  first  impressive  in 
any  way — a  gaunt  emaciated  figure,  a  sharp  eagle  face,  and  a  cold 
meditative  eye,  rather  repelled  than  attracted  those  who  saw  him 
for  the  first  time."  I  do  not  think  Mr.  McCarthy's  phrases  very 
happily  chosen  to  convey  his  meaning.  Surely  a  gaunt  emaciated 
frame  and  a  sharp  eagle  face  are  the  very  characteristics  which  we 
should  picture  to  ourselves  as  belonging  to  Peter  the  Hermit,  or 
Scott's  Ephraim  Macbriar  in  Old  Mortality.  However  unimpressive 
the  look  of  an  eagle  may  be  in  Mr.  McCarthy's  opinion,  I  do  not 
agree  with  him  about  Dr.  Newman.  When  I  knew  him  at  Oxford, 
these  somewhat  disparaging  remarks  would  not  have  been  applicable. 
His  manner,  it  is  true,  may  have  been  self-repressed,  constrained  it 
was  not.  His  bearing  was  neither  awkward  nor  ungraceful ;  it  was 
simply  quiet  and  calm,  because  under  strict  control ;  but  beneath 
that  calmness,  intense  feeling,  I  think,  was  obvious  to  those  who 
had  any  instinct  of  sympathy  with  him.  But  if  Mr.  McCarthy's 
acquaintance  with  him  only  began  when  he  took  office  in  an  Irish 
Catholic  university,  I  can  quite  understand  that  (flexibility  not  being 
one  of  his  special  gifts)  he  may  have  failed  now  and  again  to  bring 
himself  into  perfect  harmony  with  an  Irish  audience.  He  was  prob- 
ably too  much  of  a  typical  Englishman  for  his  place ;  nevertheless 
Mr.  McCarthy,  though  he  does  not  seem  to  have  admired  him  in 
the  pulpit,  is  fully  sensible  of  his  intellectual  powers  and  general 
eminence. 


126  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  vn 

Dr.  Pusey,  who  used  every  now  and  then  to  take  Newman's 
duties  at  St.  Mary's,  was  to  me  a  much  less  interesting  person.  [A 
learned  man,  no  doubt,  but  dull  and  tedious  as  a  preacher.]  Cer- 
tainly, in  spite  of  the  name  Puseyism  having  been  given  to  the 
Oxford  attempt  at  a  new  Catholic  departure,  he  was  not  the 
Columbus  of  that  voyage  of  discovery  undertaken  to  find  a  safer 
haven  for  the  Church  of  England.  I  may,  however,  be  more  or 
less  unjust  to  him,  as  I  owe  him  a  sort  of  grudge.  His  discourses 
were  not  only  less  attractive  than  those  of  Dr.  Newman,  but  always 
much  longer,  and  the  result  of  this  was  that  the  learned  Canon  of 
Christ  Church  generally  made  me  late  for  dinner  at  my  College,  a 
calamity  never  inflicted  on  his  All  Souls'  hearers  by  the  terser  and 
swifter  fellow  of  Oriel  whom  he  was  replacing. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

SUBSCRIPTION    AT    MATRICULATION    AND    ADMISSION 
OF    DISSENTERS 

"  DEPEND  upon  it,"  an  earnest  High  Churchman  of 
the  Joshua  Watson  type  had  said  to  one  of  Mr. 
Newman's  friends,  who  was  a  link  between  the  old 
Churchmanship  and  the  new — "depend  upon  it,  the 
day  will  come  when  those  great  doctrines  "  connected 
with  the  Church,  "  now  buried,  will  be  brought  out  to> 
the  light  of  the  day,  and  then  the  effect  will  be  quite 
fearful."  l  With  the  publication  of  the  Tracts  for  the 
Times,  and  the  excitement  caused  by  them,  the  day 
had  come. 

Their  unflinching  and  severe  proclamation  of 
Church  principles  and  Church  doctrines  coincided  with 
a  state  of  feeling  and  opinion  in  the  country,  in  which 
two  very  different  tendencies  might  be  observed. 
They  fell  on  the  public  mind  just  when  one  of  these 
tendencies  would  help  them,  and  the  other  be  fiercely 
hostile.  On  the  one  hand,  the  issue  of  the  political 
controversy  with  the  Roman  Catholics,  their  triumph 
all  along  the  line,  and  the  now  scarcely  disguised 

1  The    conversation    between     Mr.       Letter  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
Sikes  of  Guilsborough  and  Mr.  Cope-      (1842),  pp.  32-34. 
land  is  given  in  full   in   Dr.    Pusey's 


128  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

contempt  shown  by  their  political  representatives  for 
the  pledges  and  explanations  on  which  their  relief  was 
supposed  to  have  been  conceded,  had  left  the  public 
mind    sore,    angry,    and    suspicious.       Orthodox    and 
Evangelicals  were  alike  alarmed  and  indignant ;  and 
the  Evangelicals,  always  doctrinally  jealous  of  Popery, 
and  of  anything  "unsound"  in  that  direction,  had  been 
roused  to  increased   irritation   by  the  proceedings   of 
the     Reformation    Society,    which    had    made    it    its 
business  to  hold   meetings    and    discussions    all   over 
the  country,  where  fervid  and  sometimes  eloquent  and 
able  Irishmen,  like   Mr.  E.  Tottenham,  afterwards  of 
Laura  Chapel,  Bath,  had  argued  and  declaimed,  with 
Roman  text-books  in  hand,  on  such  questions  as  the 
Right  of  Private  Judgment,  the  Rule  of  Faith,  and  the 
articles  of  the  Tridentine  Creed — not  always  with  the 
effect  which  they  intended  on  those  who  heard  them, 
with   whom    their   arguments,    and   those  which   they 
elicited   from  their  opponents,  sometimes  left  behind 
uncomfortable    misgivings,   and  questions   even  more 
serious    than    the   controversy   itself.      On    the  other 
hand,   in  quarters  quite  unconnected  with  the    recog- 
nised    religious     schools,     interest     had     been     inde- 
pendently   and    strongly    awakened    in    the   minds   of 
theologians  and   philosophical    thinkers,  in   regard   to 
the    idea,    history,    and    relations    to    society    of    the 
Christian  Church.      In  Ireland,  a  recluse,  who  was  the 
centre  of  a  small  knot  of  earnest  friends,  a  man  of  deep 
piety  and  great  freedom  and  originality  of  mind,  Mr. 
Alexander  Knox,  had  been  led,  partly,  it  may  be,  by 
his  intimacy  with  John  Wesley,  to  think  out  for  him- 
self the  character  and  true  constitution  of  the  Church, 
and  the  nature  of  the  doctrines  which  it  was  commis- 
sioned to  teach.    In  England,  another  recluse,  of  splendid 


vin  SUBSCRIPTION  A  T  MA  TRICULA  TION  1 29 

genius  and   wayward   humour,   had  dealt  in  his  own 
way,  with  far-reaching  insight,  with  vast  reading,  and 
often  with  impressive  eloquence,  with  the  same  subject ; 
and  his  profound  sympathy  and  faith  had  been  shared 
and  reflected  by  a  great  poet.     What  Coleridge  and 
Wordsworth  had  put  in  the  forefront  of  their  specula- 
tions and  poetry,  as  the  object  of  their  profoundest 
interest,  and  of  their  highest  hopes  for  mankind,  might, 
of  course,  fail  to  appear  in  the  same  light  to  others ; 
but  it  could  not  fail,  in  those  days  at  least,  to  attract 
attention,  as  a  matter  of  grave  and  well-founded  im- 
portance.    Coleridge's  theories  of  the  Church  were  his 
own,  and  were  very  wide  of  theories  recognised  by 
any  of   those  who  had  to   deal    practically  with  the 
question,   and  who  were    influenced,   in    one  way   or 
another,  by  the  traditional   doctrines  of  theologians. 
But   Coleridge  had  lifted  the  subject  to  a  very  high 
level.       He   had  taken   the  simple  but   all -important 
step  of  viewing  the  Church  in  its  spiritual  character 
as  first  and  foremost  and  above  all  things  essentially  a 
religious  society  of  divine  institution,   not  dependent 
on  the  creation  or  will  of  man,  or  on  the  privileges 
and  honours  which  man  might  think  fit  to  assign  to 
it ;  and  he  had  undoubtedly  familiarised  the  minds  of 
many  with  this  way  of  regarding  it,  however  imperfect, 
or  cloudy,  or  unpractical  they  might  find  the  develop- 
ment  of  his    ideas,   and   his   deductions    from    them. 
And  in  Oxford  the  questions  which   had  stirred  the 
friends  at   Hadleigh  had  stirred  others  also,  and  had 
waked  up  various  responses.     Whately's  acute  mind 
had  not  missed  these  questions,  and  had  given  original 
if  insufficient  answers  to  them.      Blanco  White  knew 
only  too  well  their  bearing  and  importance,  and  had 
laboured,  not  without  success,  to  leave  behind  him  his 

K 


130  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

own  impress  on  the  way  in  which  they  should  be  dealt 
with.  Dr.  Hampden,  the  man  in  Oxford  best  ac- 
quainted with  Aristotle's  works  and  with  the  scholastic 
philosophy,  had  thrown  Christian  doctrines  into  a 
philosophical  calculus  which  seemed  to  leave  them 
little  better  than  the  inventions  of  men.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  brilliant  scholar,  whose  after- career  was 
strangely  full  of  great  successes  and  deplorable  disas- 
ters, William  Sewell  of  Exeter  College,  had  opened,  in 
a  way  new  to  Oxford,  the  wealth  and  magnificence  of 
Plato ;  and  his  thoughts  had  been  dazzled  by  seeming 
to  find  in  the  truths  and  facts  of  the  Christian  Church 
the  counterpart  and  realisation  of  the  grandest  of 
Plato's  imaginations.  The  subjects  treated  with  such 
dogmatic  severity  and  such  impetuous  earnestness  in 
the  Tracts  were,  in  one  shape  or  another,  in  all 
men's  minds,  when  these  Tracts  broke  on  the 
University  and  English  society  with  their  peremptory 
call  to  men  "  to  take  their  side." 

There  was  just  a  moment  of  surprise  and  uncer- 
tainty— uncertainty  as  to  what  the  Tracts  meant ; 
whether  they  were  to  be  a  new  weapon  against  the 
enemies  of  the  Church,  or  were  simply  extravagant 
and  preposterous  novelties — just  a  certain  perplexity 
and  hesitation  at  their  conflicting  aspects  ;  on  the  one 
hand,  the  known  and  high  character  of  the  writers, 
their  evident  determination  and  confidence  in  their 
cause,  the  attraction  of  their  religious  warmth  and 
unselfishness  and  nobleness,  the  dim  consciousness 
that  much  that  they  said  was  undeniable ;  and  on 
the  other  hand,  the  apparent  wildness  and  reckless- 
ness of  their  words :  and  then  public  opinion 
began  steadily  to  take  its  "  ply,"  and  to  be  agreed 
in  condemning  them.  It  soon  went  farther,  and 


vni  SUBSCRIPTION  A  T  MA  TRICULA  TION  131 

became  vehement  in  reprobating  them  as  scandalous 
and  dangerous  publications.  They  incensed  the 
Evangelicals  by  their  alleged  Romanism,  and  their 
unsound  views  about  justification,  good  works,  and  the 
sacraments  ;  they  angered  the  "  two-bottle  orthodox  " 
by  their  asceticism — the  steady  men,  by  their  audacity 
and  strong  words — the  liberals,  by  their  dogmatic 
severity ;  their  seriously  practical  bearing  was  early 
disclosed  in  a  tract  on  "  Fasting."  But  while  they 
repelled  strongly,  they  attracted  strongly  ;  they  touched 
many  consciences,  they  won  many  hearts,  they  opened 
new  thoughts  and  hopes  to  many  minds.  One  of  the 
mischiefs  of  the  Tracts,  and  of  those  sermons  at  St. 
Mary's  which  were  the  commentaries  on  them,  was 
that  so  many  people  seemed  to  like  them  and  to  be 
struck  by  them.  The  gathering  storm  muttered  and 
growled  for  some  time  at  a  distance,  and  men  seemed 
to  be  taking  time  to  make  up  their  minds  ;  but  it  began 
to  lour  from  early  days,  till  after  various  threatenings 
it  broke  in  a  furious  article  in  the  Edinburgh,  by  Dr. 
Arnold,  on  the  "  Oxford  Malignants  "  ;  and  the  Tract- 
writers  and  their  friends  became,  what  they  long  con- 
tinued to  be,  the  most  unpopular  and  suspected  body 
of  men  in  the  Church,  whom  everybody  was  at  liberty 
to  insult,  both  as  dishonest  and  absurd,  of  whom 
nothing  was  too  cruel  to  say,  nothing  too  ridiculous  to 
believe.  It  is  only  equitable  to  take  into  account  the 
unprepared  state  of  the  public  mind,  the  surprise  and 
novelty  of  even  the  commonest  things  when  put  in  a 
new  light,  the  prejudices  which  the  Tract-writers  were 
thought  wantonly  to  offend  and  defy,  their  militant  and 
uncompromising  attitude,  where  principles  were  at 
stake.  But  considering  what  these  men  were  known 
to  be  in  character  and  life,  what  was  the  emergency 


132  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

and  what  were  the  pressing  motives  which  called 
for  action,  and  what  is  thought  of  them  now  that 
their  course  is  run,  it  is  strange  indeed  to  re- 
member who  they  were,  to  whom  the  courtesies 
of  controversy  were  denied,  not  only  by  the  vulgar 
herd  of  pamphleteers,  but  by  men  of  ability  and  posi- 
tion, some  of  whom  had  been  their  familiar  friends. 
Of  course  a  nickname  was  soon  found  for  them  :  the 
word  "  Tractarian "  was  invented,  and  Archbishop 
Whately  thought  it  worth  while,  but  not  successfully, 
to  improve  it  into  "  Tractites."  Archbishop  Whately, 
always  ingenious,  appears  to  have  suspected  that  the 
real  but  concealed  object  of  the  movement  was  to 
propagate  a  secret  infidelity  ;  they  were  "  Children  of 
the  Mist,"  or  "Veiled  Prophets";1  and  he  seriously 
suggested  to  a  friend  who  was  writing  against  it, — 
"this  rapidly  spreading  pestilence," — to  parallel  it,  in 
its  characteristics  and  modes  of  working,  with  Indian 
Thuggee.2 

But  these  things  were  of  gradual  growth.  To- 
wards the  end  of  1834  a  question  appeared  in  Oxford 
interesting  to  numbers  besides  Mr.  Newman  and  his 
friends,  which  was  to  lead  to  momentous  consequences. 
The  old,  crude  ideas  of  change  in  the  Church  had  come 
to  appear,  even  to  their  advocates,  for  the  present  im- 


1  "  Dr.  Wilson  was  mightily  pleased  bring  into   your  Bampton   Lectures  a 
with    my    calling   the   traditionals    the  mention  of  the  Thugs.   .   .   .   Observe 
'Children  of  the  Mist.'     The  title  of  their   submissive    piety,  their    faith    in 
'Veiled  Prophets' he  thought  too  severe"  long-preserved  tradition,   their    regular 
(1838),  Life,  ed.  1875,  p.  167.      Com-  succession     of     ordinations     to     their 
pare   "  Hints  to  Transcendentalists  for  offices,  their  faith  in    the   sacramental 
Working      Infidel      Designs     through  virtue  of  the  consecrated  governor ;  in 
Tractarianism,"   a  jeu  d1  esprit  (1840),  short,   compare    our    religion  with  the 
ib.  p.   1 88.      "As  for  the  suspicion  of  Thuggee,   putting  (nit   of   account    all 
secret   infidelity,  I  have  said    no  more  those  considerations  which  the  tradition- 
than  I  sincerely  feel,"  ib.  p.  181.  ists    deprecate    the    discussion    of,    and 

2  "It  would  be  a  curious    thing  if  where  is  the  difference?"    (1840),  ib. 
you    (the    Provost    of    Oriel)    were    to  p.  194. 


vni  SUBSCRIPTION  A T  MA  TRICULA  TION  133 

practicable,  and  there  was  no  more  talk  for  a  long 
time  of  schemes  which  had  been  in  favour  two  years 
before.  The  ground  was  changed,  and  a  point  was 
now  brought  forward  on  the  Liberal  side,  for  which  a 
good  deal  might  be  plausibly  said.  This  was  the 
requirement  of  subscription  to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles 
from  young  men  at  matriculation  ;  and  a  strong 
pamphlet  advocating  its  abolition,  with  the  express 
purpose  of  admitting  Dissenters,  was  published  by 
Dr.  Hampden,  the  Bampton  Lecturer  of  two  years 
before. 

Oxford  had  always  been  one  of  the  great  schools 
of  the  Church.  Its  traditions,  its  tone,  its  customs,  its 
rules,  all  expressed  or  presumed  the  closest  attachment 
to  that  way  of  religion  which  was  specially  identified 
with  the  Church,  in  its  doctrinal  and  historical  aspect. 
Oxford  was  emphatically  definite,  dogmatic,  orthodox, 
compared  even  with  Cambridge,  which  had  largely 
favoured  the  Evangelical  school,  and  had  leanings  to 
Liberalism.  Oxford,  unlike  Cambridge,  gave  notice  of 
its  attitude  by  requiring  every  one  who  matriculated  to 
subscribe  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  :  the  theory  of  its 
Tutorial  system,  of  its  lectures  and  examinations,  im- 
plied what  of  late  years  in  the  better  colleges,  though 
certainly  not  everywhere,  had  been  realised  in  fact — a 
considerable  amount  of  religious  and  theological  teach- 
ing. And  whatever  might  have  been  said  originally  of 
the  lay  character  of  the  University,  the  colleges,  which 
had  become  coextensive  with  the  University,  were  for 
the  most  part,  in  the  intention  of  their  founders,  meant 
to  educate  and  support  theological  students  on  their 
foundations  for  the  service  of  the  Church.  It  became 
in  time  the  fashion  to  call  them  lay  institutions  :  legally 
they  may  have  been  so,  but  judged  by  their  statutes, 


134  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

they  were  nearly  all  of  them  as  ecclesiastical  as  the 
Chapter  of  a  Cathedral.  And  Oxford  was  the  fulcrum 
from  which  the  theological  revival  hoped  to  move  the 
Church.  It  was  therefore  a  shock  and  a  challenge  of 
no  light  kind,  when  not  merely  the  proposal  was  made 
to  abolish  the  matriculation  subscription  with  the 
express  object  of  attracting  Dissenters,  and  to  get 
Parliament  to  force  the  change  on  the  University  if 
the  University  resisted,  but  the  proposal  itself  was 
vindicated  and  enforced  in  a  pamphlet  by  Dr. 
Hampden  by  a  definite  and  precise  theory  which 
stopped  not  short  of  the  position  that  all  creeds 
and  formularies — everything  which  represented  the 
authority  of  the  teaching  Church — however  inci- 
dentally and  temporarily  useful,  were  in  their  own 
nature  the  inventions  of  a  mistaken  and  corrupt  philo- 
sophy, and  invasions  of  Christian  liberty.  This  was 
cutting  deep  with  a  vengeance,  though  the  author  of 
the  theory  seemed  alone  unable  to  see  it.  It  went  to 
the  root  of  the  whole  matter  ;  and  if  Dr.  Hampden  was 
right,  there  was  neither  Church  nor  doctrine  worth 
contending  for,  except  as  men  contend  about  the 
Newtonian  or  the  undulatory  theory  of  light. 

No  one  ought  now  to  affect,  as  some  people  used 
to  affect  at  the  time,  that  the  question  was  of  secondary 
importance,  and  turned  mainly  on  the  special  fitness 
of  the  Thirty -nine  Articles  to  be  offered  for  the 
proof  of  a  young  man's  belief.  It  was  a  much  more 
critical  question.  It  was  really,  however  disguised, 
the  question,  asked  then  for  the  first  time,  and  since 
finally  decided,  whether  Oxford  was  to  continue  to  be  a 
school  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  and  it  also  involved 
the  wider  question,  what  part  belief  in  definite  religion 
should  have  in  higher  education.  It  is  speciously  said 


vin  SUBSCRIPTION  AT  MATRICULATION  135 

that  you  have  no  right  to  forestall  a  young  man's  in- 
quiries and  convictions  by  imposing  on  him  in  his  early 
years  opinions  which  to  him  become  prejudices.  And 
if  the  world  consisted  simply  of  individuals,  entirely 
insulated  and  self-sufficing  ;  if  men  could  be  taught 
anything  whatever,  without  presuming  what  is  believed 
by  those  who  teach  them ;  and  if  the  attempt  to  exclude 
religious  prejudice  did  not  necessarily,  by  the  mere 
force  of  the  attempt,  involve  the  creation  of  anti- 
religious  prejudice,  these  reasoners,  who  try  in  vain  to 
get  out  of  the  conditions  which  hem  them  in,  might 
have  more  to  say  for  themselves.  To  the  men  who 
had  made  such  an  effort  to  restore  a  living  confidence 
in  the  Church,  the  demand  implied  giving  up  all  that 
they  had  done  and  all  that  they  hoped  for.  It 
was  not  the  time  for  yielding  even  a  clumsy  proof  of 
the  religious  character  of  the  University.  And  the 
beginning  of  a  long  and  doubtful  war  was  inevitable. 

A  war  of  pamphlets  ensued.  By  the  one  side 
the  distinction  was  strongly  insisted  on  between  mere 
instruction  and  education,  the  distinctly  religious  char- 
acter of  the  University  education  was  not  perhaps 
overstated  in  its  theory,  but  portrayed  in  stronger 
colours  than  was  everywhere  the  fact ;  and  assertions 
were  made,  which  sound  strange  in  their  boldness 
now,  of  the  independent  and  constitutional  right  to 
self-government  in  the  great  University  corporations. 
By  the  other  side,  the  ordinary  arguments  were  used, 
about  the  injustice  and  mischief  of  exclusion,  and  the 
hurtfulness  of  tests,  especially  such  tests  as  the  Articles 
applied  to  young  and  ignorant  men.  Two  pamphlets 
had  more  than  a  passing  interest  :  one,  by  a  then 
unknown  writer  who  signed  himself  Rusticus,  and 
whose  name  was  Mr.  F.  D.  Maurice,  defended  sub- 


136  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

scription  on  the  ground  that  the  Articles  were  signed, 
not  as  tests  and  confessions  of  faith,  but  as  "  conditions 
of  thought,"  the  expressly  stated  conditions,  such  as 
there  must  be  in  all  teaching,  under  which  the  learners 
are  willing  to  learn  and  the  teacher  to  teach  :  and  he 
developed  his  view  at  great  length,  with  great  wealth 
of  original  thought  and  illustration  and  much  eloquence, 
but  with  that  fatal  want  of  clearness  which,  as  so  often 
afterwards,  came  from  his  struggles  to  embrace  in  one 
large  view  what  appeared  opposite  aspects  of  a  diffi- 
cult subject.  The  other  was  the  pamphlet,  already 
referred  to,  by  Dr.  Hampden  :  and  of  which  the  im- 
portance arose,  not  from  its  conclusions,  but  from  its 
reasons.  Its  ground  was  the  distinction  which  he  had 
argued  out  at  great  length  in  his  Bampton  Lectures — 
the  distinction  between  the  "  Divine  facts  "  of  revela- 
tion, and  all  human  interpretations  of  them  and  infer- 
ences from  them.  "  Divine  facts,"  he  maintained,  were 
of  course  binding  on  all  Christians,  and  in  matter  of 
fact  were  accepted  by  all  who  called  themselves  Chris- 
tians, including  Unitarians.  Human  interpretations 
and  inferences — and  all  Church  formularies  were  such 
— were  binding  on  no  one  but  those  who  had  reason 
to  think  them  true ;  and  therefore  least  of  all  on 
undergraduates  who  could  not  have  examined  them. 
The  distinction,  when  first  put  forward,  seemed 
to  mean  much ;  at  a  later  time  it  was  explained 
to  mean  very  little.  But  at  present  its  value  as  a 
ground  of  argument  against  the  old  system  of  the 
University  was  thought  much  of  by  its  author  and  his 
friends.  A  warning  note  was  at  once  given  that  its 
significance  was  perceived  and  appreciated.  Mr. 
Newman,  in  acknowledging  a  presentation  copy,  added 
words  which  foreshadowed  much  that  was  to  follow. 


viii  SUBSCRIPTION  AT  MATRICULATION  137 

"  While  I  respect,"  he  wrote,  "the  tone  of  piety  which 
the  pamphlet  displays,  I  dare  not  trust  myself  to  put 
on  paper  my  feelings  about  the  principles  contained  in 
it ;  tending,  as  they  do,  in  my  opinion,  to  make  ship- 
wreck of  Christian  faith.  I  also  lament  that,  by  its 
appearance,  the  first  step  has  been  taken  towards 
interrupting  that  peace  and  mutual  good  understanding 
which  has  prevailed  so  long  in  this  place,  and  which,  if 
once  seriously  disturbed,  will  be  succeeded  by  discus- 
sions the  more  intractable,  because  justified  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  resist  innovation  by  a  feeling  of 
imperative  duty."  "Since  that  time,"  he  goes  on  in 
the  Apologia,  where  he  quotes  this  letter,  "  Phaeton 
has  got  into  the  chariot  of  the  sun."1  But  they  were 
early  days  then  ;  and  when  the  Heads  of  Houses,  who 
the  year  before  had  joined  with  the  great  body  of  the 
University  in  a  declaration  against  the  threatened 
legislation,  were  persuaded  to  propose  to  the  Oxford 
Convocation  the  abolition  of  subscription  at  matricula- 
tion in  May  1835,  this  proposal  was  rejected  by  a 
majority  of  five  to  one. 

This  large  majority  was  a  genuine  expression  of 
the  sense  of  the  University.  It  was  not  specially  a 
"  Tractarian  "  success,  though  most  of  the  arguments 
which  contributed  to  it  came  from  men  who  more  or 
less  sympathised  with  the  effort  to  make  a  vigorous 
fight  for  the  Church  and  its  teaching  ;  and  it  showed  that 
they  who  had  made  the  effort  had  touched  springs  of 
thought  and  feeling,  and  awakened  new  hopes  and 
interest  in  those  around  them,  in  Oxford,  and  in  the 
country.  But  graver  events  were  at  hand.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  year  (1835),  Dr.  Burton,  the  Regius 
Professor  of  Divinity,  suddenly  died,  still  a  young  man. 

1  Apologia,  pp.  131,  132. 


138  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  vm 

And  Lord  Melbourne  was  induced  to  appoint  as  his 
successor,  and  as  the  head  of  the  theological  teaching  of 
the  University,  the  writer  who  had  just  a  second  time 
seemed  to  lay  the  axe  to  the  root  of  all  theology  ;  who 
had  just  reasserted  that  he  looked  upon  creeds,  and  all 
the  documents  which  embodied  the  traditional  doctrine 
and  collective  thought  of  the  Church,  as  invested  by 
ignorance  and  prejudice  with  an  authority  which  was 
without  foundation,  and  which  was  misleading  and 
mischievous. 


CHAPTER  IX 

DR.    HAMPDEN 

THE  stage  on  which  what  is  called  the  Oxford  move- 
ment ran  through  its  course  had  a  special  character 
of  its  own,  unlike  the  circumstances  in  which  other 
religious  efforts  had  done  their  work.  The  scene  of 
Jansenism  had  been  a  great  capital,  a  brilliant  society, 
the  precincts  of  a  court,  the  cells  of  a  convent,  the 
studies  and  libraries  of  the  doctors  of  the  Sorbonne, 
the  council  chambers  of  the  Vatican.  The  scene 
of  Methodism  had  been  English  villages  and  country 
towns,  the  moors  of  Cornwall,  and  the  collieries  of 
Bristol,  at  length  London  fashionable  chapels.  The 
scene  of  this  new  movement  was  as  like  as  it 
could  be  in  our  modern  world  to  a  Greek  7ro\is, 
or  an  Italian  self-centred  city  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Oxford  stood  by  itself  in  its  meadows  by  the  rivers, 
having  its  relations  with  all  England,  but,  like  its  sister 
at  Cambridge,  living  a  life  of  its  own,  unlike  that  of 
any  other  spot  in  England,  with  its  privileged  powers, 
and  exemptions  from  the  general  law,  with  its  special 
mode  of  government  and  police,  its  usages  and  tastes 
and  traditions,  and  even  costume,  which  the  rest  of 
England  looked  at  from  the  outside,  much  interested 
but  much  puzzled,  or  knew  only  by  transient  visits. 


140  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

And  Oxford  was  as  proud  and  jealous  of  its  own  ways 
as  Athens  or  Florence ;  and  like  them  it  had  its  quaint 
fashions  of  polity  ;  its  democratic  Convocation  and  its 
oligarchy ;  its  social  ranks ;  its  discipline,  severe  in 
theory  and  usually  lax  in  fact ;  its  self-governed  bodies 
and  corporations  within  itself ;  its  faculties  and  colleges, 
like  the  guilds  and  "  arts "  of  Florence ;  its  internal 
rivalries  and  discords  ;  its  "  sets  "  and  factions.  Like 
these,  too,  it  professed  a  special  recognition  of  the 
supremacy  of  religion  ;  it  claimed  to  be  a  home  of 
worship  and  religious  training,  Dominus  illuminatio 
mea,  a  claim  too  often  falsified  in  the  habit  and  tempers 
of  life.  It  was  a  small  sphere,  but  it  was  a  conspicuous 
one  ;  for  there  was  much  strong  and  energetic  char- 
acter, brought  out  by  the  aims  and  conditions  of  Uni- 
versity life  ;  and  though  moving  in  a  separate  orbit,  the 
influence  of  the  famous  place  over  the  outside  England, 
though  imperfectly  understood,  was  recognised  and 
great.  These  conditions  affected  the  character  of  the 
movement,  and  of  the  conflicts  which  it  caused.  Oxford 
claimed  to  be  eminently  the  guardian  of  "  true  religion 
and  sound  learning  "  ;  and  therefore  it  was  eminently 
the  place  where  religion  should  be  recalled  to  its  purity 
and  strength,  and  also  the  place  where  there  ought  to 
be  the  most  vigilant  jealousy  against  the  perversions 
and  corruptions  of  religion.  Oxford  was  a  place  where 
every  one  knew  his  neighbour,  and  measured  him,  and 
was  more  or  less  friendly  or  repellent ;  where  the 
customs  of  life  brought  men  together  every  day  and 
all  day,  in  converse  or  discussion  ;  and  where  every 
fresh  statement  or  every  new  step  taken  furnished  end- 
less material  for  speculation  or  debate,  in  common 
rooms  or  in  the  afternoon  walk.  And  for  this  reason, 
too,  feelings  were  apt  to  be  more  keen  and  intense 


DR.  HAMPDEN  141 


and  personal  than  in  the  larger  scenes  of  life  ;  the  man 
who  was  disliked  or  distrusted  was  so  close  to  his 
neighbours  that  he  was  more  irritating  than  if  he  had 
been  obscured  by  a  crowd ;  the  man  who  attracted 
confidence  and  kindled  enthusiasm,  whose  voice  was 
continually  in  men's  ears,  and  whose  private  conversation 
and  life  was  something  ever  new  in  its  sympathy  and 
charm,  created  in  those  about  him  not  mere  admiration, 
but  passionate  friendship,  or  unreserved  discipleship. 
And  these  feelings  passed  from  individuals  into  parties  ; 
the  small  factions  of  a  limited  area.  Men  struck 
blows  and  loved  and  hated  in  those  days  in  Oxford 
as  they  hardly  did  on  the  wider  stage  of  London 
politics  or  general  religious  controversy. 

The  conflicts  which  for  a  time  turned  Oxford  into 
a  kind  of  image  of  what  Florence  was  in  the  days 
of  Savonarola,  with  its  nicknames,  Puseyites,  and 
Neomaniacs,  and  High  and  Dry,  counterparts  to  the 
Piagnoni  and  Arrabbiati,  of  the  older  strife,  began 
around  a  student  of  retired  habits,  interested  more 
than  was  usual  at  Oxford  in  abstruse  philosophy, 
and  the  last  person  who  might  be  expected  to  be 
the  occasion  of  great  dissensions  in  the  University. 
Dr.  Hampden  was  a  man  who,  with  no  definite 
intentions  of  innovating  on  the  received  doctrines  of 
the  Church — indeed,  as  his  sermons  showed,  with  a 
full  acceptance  of  them — had  taken  a  very  difficult 
subject  for  a  course  of  Barnpton  Lectures,  without 
at  all  fathoming  its  depth  and  reach,  and  had  got  into 
a  serious  scrape  in  consequence.  Personally  he  was  a 
man  of  serious  but  cold  religion,  having  little  sympathy 
with  others,  and  consequently  not  able  to  attract 
any.  His  isolation  during  the  whole  of  his  career 
is  remarkable ;  he  attached  no  one,  as  Whately 


1 42  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

or  Arnold  attached  men.  His  mind,  which  was 
a  speculative  one,  was  not  one,  in  its  own  order, 
of  the  first  class.  He  had  not  the  grasp  nor  the 
subtlety  necessary  for  his  task.  He  had  a  certain 
power  of  statement,  but  little  of  co-ordination  ;  he 
seems  not  to  have  had  the  power  of  seeing  when  his 
ideas  were  really  irreconcilable,  and  he  thought  that 
simply  by  insisting  on  his  distinctly  orthodox  state- 
ments he  not  only  balanced,  but  neutralised,  and  did 
away  with  his  distinctly  unorthodox  ones.  He  had 
read  a  good  deal  of  Aristotle  and  something  of  the 
Schoolmen,  which  probably  no  one  else  in  Oxford  had 
done  except  Blanco  White ;  and  the  temptation  of 
having  read  what  no  one  else  knows  anything  about 
sometimes  leads  men  to  make  an  unprofitable  use  of  their 
special  knowledge,  which  they  consider  their  monopoly. 
The  creed  and  dogmas  of  the  Christian  Church  are, 
at  least  in  their  broad  features,  not  a  speculation,  but 
a  fact.  That  not  only  the  Apostles'  Creed,  but  the 
Nicene  and  Constantinopolitan  Creeds,  are  assumed 
as  facts  by  the  whole  of  anything  that  can  be 
called  the  Church,  is  as  certain  as  the  reception  by  the 
same  body,  and  for  the  same  time,  of  the  Scriptures. 
Not  only  the  Creed,  but,  up  to  the  sixteenth  century, 
the  hierarchy,  and  not  only  Creed  and  hierarchy  and 
Scriptures,  but  the  sacramental  idea  as  expressed  in 
the  liturgies,  are  equally  in  the  same  class  of  facts.  Of 
course  it  is  open  to  any  one  to  question  the  genuine 
origin  of  any  of  these  great  portions  of  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  Church  ;  but  the  Church  is  so  committed  to 
them  that  he  cannot  enter  on  his  destructive  criticism 
without  having  to  criticise,  not  one  only,  but  all  these 
beliefs,  and  without  soon  having  to  face  the  question 
whether  the  whole  idea  of  the  Church,  as  a  real  and 


DR.  H AMP  DEN  143 


divinely  ordained  society,  with  a  definite  doctrine  and 
belief,  is  not  a  delusion,  and  whether  Christianity, 
whatever  it  is,  is  addressed  solely  to  each  individual, 
one  by  one,  to  make  what  he  can  of  it.  It  need 
hardly  be  said  that  within  the  limits  of  what  the 
Church  is  committed  to  there  is  room  for  very  wide 
differences  of  opinion  ;  it  is  also  true  that  these  limits 
have,  in  different  times  of  the  Church,  been  illegiti- 
mately and  mischievously  narrowed  by  prevailing 
opinions,  and  by  documents  and  formularies  respecting 
it.  But  though  we  may  claim  not  to  be  bound  by  the 
Augsburg  Confession,  or  by  the  Lambeth  articles,  or 
the  Synod  of  Dort,  or  the  Bull  Unigenitus,  it  does  not 
follow  that,  if  there  is  a  Church  at  all,  there  is  no  more 
binding  authority  in  the  theology  of  the  Nicene  and 
Athanasian  Creeds.  And  it  is  the  province  of  the 
divine  who  believes  in  a  Church  at  all,  and  in  its  office 
to  be  the  teacher  and  witness  of  religious  truth,  to 
distinguish  between  the  infinitely  varying  degrees  of 
authority  with  which  professed  representations  of 
portions  of  this  truth  are  propounded  for  acceptance. 
It  may  be  difficult  or  impossible  to  agree  on  a  theory 
of  inspiration ;  but  that  the  Church  doctrine  of  some 
kind  of  special  inspiration  of  Scripture  is  part  of  Chris- 
tianity is,  unless  Christianity  be  a  dream,  certain.  No 
one  can  reasonably  doubt,  with  history  before  him, 
that  the  answer  of  the  Christian  Church  was,  the  first 
time  the  question  was  asked,  and  has  continued  to  be 
through  ages  of  controversy,  against  Arianism,  against 
Socinianism,  against  Pelagianism,  against  Zwinglian- 
ism.  It  does  not  follow  that  the  Church  has  settled 
everything,  or  that  there  are  not  hundreds  of  questions 
which  it  is  vain  and  presumptuous  to  attempt  to  settle 
by  any  alleged  authority. 


144  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

Dr.  Hampden  was  in  fact  unexceptionably,  even 
rigidly  orthodox  in  his  acceptance  of  Church  doctrine 
and  Church  creeds.  He  had  published  a  volume  of 
sermons  containing,  among  other  things,  an  able 
statement  of  the  Scriptural  argument  for  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity,  and  an  equally  able  defence  of  the 
Athanasian  Creed.  But  he  felt  that  there  are  formu- 
laries which  may  be  only  the  interpretations  of  doctrine 
and  inferences  from  Scripture  of  a  particular  time  or 
set  of  men  ;  and  he  was  desirous  of  putting  into  their 
proper  place  the  authority  of  such  formularies.  His 
object  was  to  put  an  interval  between  them  and  the 
Scriptures  from  which  they  professed  to  be  derived, 
and  to  prevent  them  from  claiming  the  command 
over  faith  and  conscience  which  was  due  only  to  the 
authentic  evidences  of  God's  revelation.  He  wished 
to  make  room  for  a  deeper  sense  of  the  weight  of 
Scripture.  He  proposed  to  himself  the  same  thing 
which  was  aimed  at  by  the  German  divines,  Arndt, 
Calixtus,  and  Spener,  when  they  rose  up  against  the 
grinding  oppression  which  Lutheran  dogmatism  had 
raised  on  its  Symbolical  Books?  and  which  had  come 
to  outdo  the  worst  extravagances  of  scholasticism. 
This  seems  to  have  been  his  object  —  a  fair  and 
legitimate  one.  But  in  arguing  against  investing 
the  Thirty-nine  Articles  with  an  authority  which  did 
not  belong  to  them,  he  unquestionably,  without  seeing 
what  he  was  doing,  went  much  farther — where  he 
never  meant  to  go.  In  fact,  he  so  stated  his  argu- 
ment that  he  took  in  with  the  Thirty-nine  Articles 
every  expression  of  collective  belief,  every  document, 
however  venerable,  which  the  Church  had  sanctioned 
from  the  first.  Strangely  enough,  without  observing 

1  See  Pusey's  Theology  of  Germany  (1828),  p.  18  sqq. 


ix  DR.  HAMPDEN  145 

it,  he  took  in — what  he  meant  to  separate  by  a  wide 
interval  from  what  he  called  dogma — the  doctrine  of 
the  infallible  authority  and  sufficiency  of  Scripture. 
In  denying  the  worth  of  the  consensus  and  immemorial 
judgment  of  the  Church,  he  cut  from  under  him  the 
claim  to  that  which  he  accepted  as  the  source  and 
witness  of  "  divine  facts."  He  did  not  mean  to  do 
this,  or  to  do  many  other  things  ;  but  from  want  of 
clearness  of  head,  he  certainly,  in  these  writings  which 
were  complained  of,  did  it.  He  was,  in  temper  and 
habit,  too  desirous  to  be  "orthodox,"  as  Whately  feared, 
to  accept  in  its  consequences  his  own  theory.  The 
theory  which  he  put  forward  in  his  Bampton  Lectures, 
and  on  which  he  founded  his  plan  of  comprehension 
in  his  pamphlet  on  Dissent,  left  nothing  standing  but 
the  authority  of  the  letter  of  Scripture.  All  else — 
right  or  wrong  as  it  might  be — was  "speculation," 
"human  inference,"  "dogma."  With  perfect  consist- 
ency, he  did  not  pretend  to  take  even  the  Creeds  out 
of  this  category.  But  the  truth  was,  he  did  not  con- 
sciously mean  all  that  he  said ;  and  when  keener 
and  more  powerful  and  more  theological  minds 
pointed  out  with  relentless  accuracy  what  he  had  said, 
he  was  profuse  and  overflowing  with  explanations, 
which  showed  how  little  he  had  perceived  the  drift 
of  his  words.  There  is  not  the  least  reason  to  doubt 
the  sincerity  of  these  explanations ;  but  at  the  same 
time  they  showed  the  unfitness  of  a  man  who  had  so 
to  explain  away  his  own  speculations  to  be  the 
official  guide  and  teacher  of  the  clergy.  The  criti- 
cisms on  his  language,  and  the  objections  to  it,  were 
made  before  these  explanations  were  given ;  and 
though  he  gave  them,  he  was  furious  with  those 
who  called  for  them,  and  he  never  for  a  moment 

L 


146  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

admitted  that  there  was  anything  seriously  wrong 
or  mistaken  in  what  he  had  said.  To  those  who 
pointed  out  the  meaning  and  effect  of  his  words 
and  theories,  he  replied  by  the  assertion  of  his 
personal  belief.  If  words  mean  anything,  he  had  said 
that  neither  Unitarians  nor  any  one  else  could  get 
behind  the  bare  letter,  and  what  he  called  "facts,"  of 
Scripture,  which  all  equally  accepted  in  good  faith  ; 
and  that  therefore  there  was  no  reason  for  excluding 
Unitarians  as  long  as  they  accepted  the  "facts."  But 
when  it  was  pointed  out  that  this  reasoning  reduced 
all  belief  in  the  realities  behind  the  bare  letter  to  the 
level  of  personal  and  private  opinion,  he  answered 
by  saying  that  he  valued  supremely  the  Creeds  and 
Articles,  and  by  giving  a  statement  of  the  great  Chris- 
tian doctrines  which  he  held,  and  which  the  Church 
taught.  But  he  never  explained  what  their  authority 
could  be  with  any  one  but  himself.  There  might  be 
interpretations  and  inferences  from  Scripture,  by  the 
hundred  or  the  thousand,  but  no  one  certain  and  author- 
itative one  ;  none  that  warranted  an  organised  Church, 
much  more  a  Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church,  founded  on 
the  assumption  of  this  interpretation  being  the  one  true 
faith,  the  one  truth  of  the  Bible.  The  point  was  brought 
out  forcibly  in  a  famous  pamphlet  written  by  Mr. 
Newman,  though  without  his  name,  called  "  Elucida- 
tions of  Dr.  Hampden's  Theological  Statements." 
This  pamphlet  was  a  favourite  object  of  attack  on 
the  part  of  Dr.  Hampden's  supporters  as  a  flagrant  in- 
stance of  unfairness  and  garbled  extracts.  No  one,  they 
said,  ever  read  the  Bampton  Lectures,  but  took  their 
estimate  of  the  work  from  Mr.  Newman's  quotations. 
Extracts  are  often  open  to  the  charge  of  unfairness, 
and  always  to  suspicion.  But  in  this  case  there  was 


DR.  HAMPDEN  147 


no  need  of  unfairness.  Dr.  Hampden's  theory  lay 
on  the  very  surface  of  his  Bampton  Lectures  and 
pamphlet ;  and  any  unbiassed  judge  may  be  challenged 
to  read  these  works  of  his,  and  say  whether  the 
extracts  in  the  "Elucidations"  do  not  adequately 
represent  Dr.  Hampden's  statements  and  arguments, 
and  whether  the  comments  on  them  are  forced  or 
strained.  They  do  not  represent  his  explanations,  for 
the  explanations  had  not  been  given  ;  and  when  the 
explanations  came,  though  they  said  many  things 
which  showed  that  Dr.  Hampden  did  not  mean  to  be 
unorthodox  and  unevangelical,  but  only  anti-scholastic 
and  anti- Roman,  they  did  not  unsay  a  word  which  he 
had  said.  And  what  this  was,  what  had  been  Dr. 
Hampden's  professed  theological  theory  up  to  the 
time  when  the  University  heard  the  news  of  his 
appointment,  the  "  Elucidations"  represent  as  fairly  as 
any  adverse  statement  can  represent  the  subject  of  its 
attack. 

In  quieter  times  such  an  appointment  might  have 
passed  with  nothing  more  than  a  paper  controversy 
or  protest,  or  more  probably  without  more  than  con- 
versational criticism.  But  these  were  not  quiet  and 
unsuspicious  times.  There  was  reason  for  disquiet. 
It  was  fresh  in  men's  minds  what  language  and 
speculation  like  that  of  the  Bampton  Lectures  had 
come  to  in  the  case  of  Whately's  intimate  friend,  Blanco 
White.  The  unquestionable  hostility  of  Whately's 
school  to  the  old  ideas  of  the  Church  had  roused 
alarm  and  a  strong  spirit  of  resistance  in  Churchmen. 
Each  party  was  on  the  watch,  and  there  certainly  was 
something  at  stake  for  both  parties.  Coupled  with 
some  recent  events,  and  with  the  part  which  Dr. 
Hampden  had  taken  on  the  subscription  question,  the 


148  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

appointment  naturally  seemed  significant.  Probably 
it  was  not  so  significant  as  it  seemed  on  the  part  at 
least  of  Lord  Melbourne,  who  had  taken  pains  to  find 
a  fit  man.  Dr.  Hampden  was  said  to  have  been 
recommended  by  Bishop  Copleston,  and  not  disallowed 
by  Archbishop  Howley.  In  the  University,  up  to 
this  time,,  there  had  been  no  authoritative  protest 
against  Dr.  Hampden's  writings.  And  there  were 
not  many  Liberals  to  choose  from.  In  the  appoint- 
ment there  is  hardly  sufficient  ground  to  blame  Lord 
Melbourne.  But  the  outcry  against  it  at  Oxford, 
when  it  came,  was  so  instantaneous,  so  strong;  and 
so  unusual,  that  it  might  have  warned  Lord  Mel- 
bourne that  he  had  been  led  into  a  mistake,  out  of 
which  it  would  be  wise  to  seek  at  least  a  way  of 
escape.  Doubtless  it  was  a  strong  measure  for  the 
University  to  protest  as  it  did ;  but  it  was  also  a 
strong  measure,  at  least  in  those  days,  for  a  Minister 
of  the  Crown  to  force  so  extremely  unacceptable  a 
Regius  Professor  of  Divinity  on  a  great  University. 
Dr.  Hampden  offered  to  resign ;  and  there  would  have 
been  plenty  of  opportunities  to  compensate  him  for  his 
sacrifice  of  a  post  which  could  only  be  a  painful  one. 
But  the  temper  of  both  sides  was  up.  The  remon- 
strances from  Oxford  were  treated  with  something 
like  contempt,  and  the  affair  was  hurried  through  till 
there  was  no  retreating  ;  and  Dr.  Hampden  became 
Regius  Professor. 

Mr.  Palmer  has  recorded  how  various  efforts  were 
made  to  neutralise  the  effect  of  the  appointment.  But 
the  Heads  of  Houses,  though  angry,  were  cautious. 
They  evaded  the  responsibility  of  stating  Dr.  Hamp- 
den's unsound  positions ;  but  to  mark  their  distrust, 
brought  in  a  proposal  to  deprive  him  of  his  vote  in  the 


jx  DR.  H AMP  DEN  149 

choice  of  Select  Preachers  till  the  University  should 
otherwise  determine.  It  was  defeated  in  Convocation 
by  the  veto  of  the  two  Proctors  (March  1836),  who  exer- 
cised their  right  with  the  full  approval  of  Dr.  Hamp- 
den's  friends,  and  the  indignation  of  the  large  majority 
of  the  University.  But  it  was  not  unfairly  used  :  it 
could  have  only  a  suspending  effect,  of  which  no  one 
had  a  right  to  complain  ;  and  when  new  Proctors  came 
into  office,  the  proposal  was  introduced  again,  and 
carried  (May  1836)  by  474  to  94.  The  Liberal 
minority  had  increased  since  the  vote  on  subscription, 
and  Dr.  Hampden  went  on  with  his  work  as  if  nothing 
had  happened.  The  attempt  was  twice  made  to  rescind 
the  vote  :  first,  after  the  outcry  about  the  Ninetieth 
Tract  and  the  contest  about  the  Poetry  Professorship, 
by  a  simple  repeal,  which  was  rejected  by  334  to  219 
(June  1842)  ;  and  next,  indirectly  by  a  statute  enlarg- 
ing the  Professor's  powers  over  Divinity  degrees, 
which  was  also  rejected  by  341  to  21  (May  1844). 
From  first  to  last,  these  things  and  others  were  the 
unfortunate  incidents  of  an  unfortunate  appointment. 

The  "persecution  of  Dr.  Hampden"  has  been  an 
unfailing  subject  of  reproach  to  the  party  of  the  Oxford 
movement,  since  the  days  when  the  Edinburgh  Review 
held  them  up  to  public  scorn  and  hatred  in  an  article 
of  strange  violence.  They  certainly  had  their  full 
share  in  the  opposition  to  him,  and  in  the  measures  by 
which  that  opposition  was  carried  out.  But  it  would 
be  the  greatest  mistake  to  suppose  that  in  this  matter 
they  stood  alone.  All  in  the  University  at  this  time, 
except  a  small  minority,  were  of  one  mind,  Heads  of 
Houses  and  country  parsons,  Evangelicals  and  High 
Churchmen — all  who  felt  that  the  grounds  of  a  definite 
belief  were  seriously  threatened  by  Dr.  Hampden's 


150  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

speculations.  All  were  angry  at  the  appointment ;  all 
were  agreed  that  something  ought  to  be  done  to  hinder 
the  mischief  of  it.  In  this  matter  Mr.  Newman  and 
his  friends  were  absolutely  at  one  with  everybody 
round  them,  with  those  who  were  soon  to  be  their 
implacable  opponents.  Whatever  deeper  view  they 
might  have  of  the  evil  which  had  been  done  by  the 
appointment,  and  however  much  graver  and  more  per- 
manent their  objections  to  it,  they  were  responsible 
only  as  the  whole  University  was  responsible  for  what 
was  done  against  Dr.  Hampden.  It  was  convenient 
afterwards  to  single  them  out,  and  to  throw  this  re- 
sponsibility and  the  odium  of  it  on  them  alone  ;  and 
when  they  came  under  the  popular  ban,  it  was  for- 
gotten that  Dr.  Gilbert,  the  Principal  of  Brasenose, 
Dr.  Symons,  the  Warden  of  Wadham,  Dr.  Faussett, 
afterwards  the  denouncer  of  Dr.  Pusey,  Mr.  Vaughan 
Thomas,  and  Mr.  Hill  of  St.  Edmund  Hall,  were 
quite  as  forward  at  the  time  as  Dr.  Pusey  and 
Mr.  Newman  in  protesting  against  Dr.  Hampden, 
and  in  the  steps  to  make  their  protest  effective. 
Mr.  Palmer,  in  his  Narrative?  anxious  to  dissociate 
himself  from  the  movement  under  Mr.  Newman's 
influence,  has  perhaps  underrated  the  part  taken  by 
Mr.  Newman  and  Dr.  Pusey;  for  they,  at  any  rate, 
did  most  of  the  argumentative  work.  But  as  far  as 
personal  action  goes,  it  is  true,  as  he  says,  that  the 
"movement  against  Dr.  Hampden  was  not  guided  by 
the  Tract- writers."  "  The  condemnation  of  Dr.  Hamp- 
den, then,  was  not  carried  by  the  Tract-writers  ;  it  was 
carried  by  the  independent  body  of  the  University. 
The  fact  is  that,  had  those  writers  taken  any  leading 
part,  the  measure  would  have  been  a  failure,  for  the 

1  Narrative,  pp.  29,  30,  ed.  1843  ;  p.  131,  eel.  1883. 


DR.  HAMPDEN  151 


number  of  their  friends  at  that  time  was  a  very  small 
proportion  to  the  University  at  large,  and  there  was  a 
general  feeling  of  distrust  in  the  soundness  of  their 
views." 

We  are  a  long  way  from  those  days  in  time,  and 
still  more  in  habits  and  sentiment ;  and  a  manifold  and 
varied  experience  has  taught  most  of  us  some  lessons 
against  impatience  and  violent  measures.  But  if  we 
put  ourselves  back  equitably  into  the  ways  of  thinking 
prevalent  then,  the  excitement  about  Dr.  Hampden 
will  not  seem  so  unreasonable  or  so  unjustifiable 
as  it  is  sometimes  assumed  to  be.  The  University 
legislation,  indeed,  to  which  it  led  was  poor  and 
petty,  doing  small  and  annoying  things,  because 
the  University  rulers  dared  not  commit  themselves 
to  definite  charges.  But,  in  the  first  place,  the 
provocation  was  great  on  the  part  of  the  Govern- 
ment in  putting  into  the  chief  theological  chair  an 
unwelcome  man  who  could  only  save  his  orthodoxy 
by  making  his  speculations  mean  next  to  nothing— 
whose  ftrimd  facie  unguarded  and  startling  statements 
were  resolved  into  truisms  put  in  a  grand  and  obscure 
form.  And  in  the  next  place,  it  was  assumed  in  those 
days  to  be  the  most  natural  and  obvious  thing  in  the 
world  to  condemn  unsound  doctrine,  and  to  exclude 
unsound  teachers.  The  principle  was  accepted  as  in- 
disputable, however  slack  might  have  been  in  recent 
times  the  application  of  it.  That  it  was  accepted,  not 
on  one  side  only,  but  on  all,  was  soon  to  be  shown  by 
the  subsequent  course  of  events.  No  one  suffered 
more  severely  and  more  persistently  from  its  applica- 
tion than  the  Tractarians  ;  no  one  was  more  ready  to 
apply  it  to  them  than  Dr.  Hampden  with  his  friends  ; 
no  one  approved  and  encouraged  its  vigorous  enforce- 


152  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

ment  against  them  more  than  Dr.  Whately.  The  idle 
distinction  set  up,  that  they  were  not  merely  unsound 
but  dishonest,  was  a  mere  insolent  pretext  to  save 
trouble  in  argument,  and  to  heighten  the  charge 
against  them  ;  no  one  could  seriously  doubt  that  they 
wrote  in  good  faith  as  much  as  Dr.  Whately  or  Dr. 
Faussett.  But  unless  acts  like  Dr.  Pusey's  suspen- 
sion, and  the  long  proscription  that  went  on  for  years 
after  it,  were  mere  instances  of  vindictive  retaliation, 
the  reproach  of  persecution  must  be  shared  by  all 
parties  then,  and  by  none  more  than  by  the  party 
which  in  general  terms  most  denounced  it.  Those 
who  think  the  Hampden  agitation  unique  in  its  in- 
justice ought  to  ask  themselves  what  their  party  would 
have  done  if  at  any  time  between  1836  and  1843  Mr. 
Newman  had  been  placed  in  Dr.  Hampden's  seat. 

People  in  our  days  mean  by  religious  persecution, 
what  happens  when  the  same  sort  of  repressive  policy 
is  applied  to  a  religious  party  as  is  applied  to  vaccin- 
ation recusants,  or  to  the  "  Peculiar  People."  All 
religious  persecution,  from  the  days  of  Socrates,  has 
taken  a  legal  form,  and  justified  itself  on  legal 
grounds.  It  is  the  action  of  authority,  or  of  strong 
social  judgments  backed  by  authority,  against  a  set  of 
opinions,  or  the  expression  of  them  in  word  or  act- 
usually  innovating  opinions,  but  not  by  any  means 
necessarily  such.  The  disciples  of  M.  Monod,  the 
"  Momiers "  of  Geneva,  were  persecuted  by  the 
Liberals  of  Geneva,  not  because  they  broke  away 
from  the  creed  of  Calvin,  but  because  they  adhered 
to  it.  The  word  is  not  properly  applied  to  the  inci- 
dental effects  in  the  way  of  disadvantage,  resulting 
from  some  broad  constitutional  settlement — from  the 
government  of  the  Church  being  Episcopal  and  not 


DR.  H AMP  DEN  153 


Presbyterian,  or  its  creed  Nicene  and  not  Arian — any 
more  than  it  is  persecution  for  a  nation  to  change  its 
government,  or  for  a  legitimist  to  have  to  live  under 
a  republic,  or  for  a  Christian  to  have  to  live  in  an 
infidel  state,  though  persecution  may  follow  from  these 
conditions.  But  the  privilegium  passed  against  Dr. 
Hampden  was  an  act  of  persecution,  though  a  mild 
one  compared  with  what  afterwards  fell  on  his  op- 
ponents with  his  full  sanction.  Persecution  is  the 
natural  impulse,  in  those  who  think  a  certain  thing 
right  and  important  or  worth  guarding,  to  disable  those 
who,  thinking  it  wrong,  are  trying  to  discredit  and 
upset  it,  and  to  substitute  something  different.  It 
implies  a  state  of  war,  and  the  resort  to  the  most 
available  weapons  to  inflict  damage  on  those  who  are 
regarded  as  rebellious  and  dangerous.  These  weapons 
were  formidable  enough  once  :  they  are  not  without 
force  still.  But  in  its  mildest  form — personal  dis- 
qualification or  proscription — it  is  a  disturbance  which 
only  war  justifies.  It  may,  of  course,  make  itself 
odious  by  its  modes  of  proceeding,  by  meanness  and 
shabbiness  and  violence,  by  underhand  and  ignoble 
methods  of  misrepresentation  and  slander,  or  by  cruelty 
and  plain  injustice  ;  and  then  the  odium  of  these  things 
fairly  falls  upon  it.  But  it  is  very  hard  to  draw  the 
line  between  conscientious  repression,  feeling  itself 
bound  to  do  what  is  possible  to  prevent  mischief,  and 
what  those  who  are  opposed,  if  they  are  the  weaker 
party,  of  course  call  persecution. 

If  persecution  implies  a  state  of  war  in  which  one 
side  is  stronger,  and  the  other  weaker,  it  is  hardly  a 
paradox  to  say  that  (i)  no  one  has  a  right  to  complain 
of  persecution  as  such,  apart  from  odious  accompani- 
ments, any  more  than  of  superior  numbers  or  hard 


154  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  ix 

blows  in  battle;  and  (2)  that  every  one  has  a  right 
to  take  advantage  and  make  the  most  of  being 
persecuted,  by  appeals  to  sympathy  and  the  principle 
of  doing  as  you  would  be  done  by.  No  one  likes  to 
be  accused  of  persecution,  and  few  people  like  to  give 
up  the  claim  to  use  it,  if  necessary.  But  no  one  can 
help  observing  in  the  course  of  events  the  strange 
way  in  which,  in  almost  all  cases,  the  "wheel  comes 
full  circle."  Apda-avri,  TraOelv  —  Chi  la  fa,  /'  aspetti? 
are  some  of  the  expressions  of  Greek  awe  and 
Italian  shrewdness  representing  the  experience  of  the 
world  on  this  subject,  on  a  large  scale  and  a  small. 
Protestants  and  Catholics,  Churchmen  and  Noncon- 
formists, have  all  in  their  turn  made  full  proof  of  what 
seems  like  a  law  of  action  and  reaction.  Except  in  cases 
beyond  debate,  cases  where  no  justification  is  possible, 
the  note  of  failure  is  upon  this  mode  of  repression. 
Providence,  by  the  visible  Nemesis  which  it  seems 
always  to  bring  round,  by  the  regularity  with  which 
it  has  enforced  the  rule  that  infliction  and  suffering  are 
bound  together  and  in  time  duly  change  places,  seems 
certainly  and  clearly  to  have  declared  against  it.  It 
may  be  that  no  innovating  party  has  a  right  to  com- 
plain of  persecution  ;  but  the  question  is  not  for  them. 
It  is  for  those  who  have  the  power,  and  who  are 
tempted  to  think  that  they  have  the  call,  to  persecute. 
It  is  for  them  to  consider  whether  it  is  right,  or  wise,  or 
useful  for  their  cause  ;  whether  it  is  agreeable  to  what 
seems  the  leading  of  Providence  to  have  recourse 
to  it. 


rdde    <puvd 


avTi    iraOflv,     Tpiytpuv    /j.vdos      Italian    proverb,    in    Landucci,    Diario 
vd.        yEsch.     Choeph.     310.      Florentine,  1513,  p.  343. 


CHAPTER   X 

GROWTH    OF    THE    MOVEMENT 
1835-1840 

BY  the  end  of  1835,  the  band  of  friends,  whom  great 
fears  and  great  hopes  for  the  Church  had  united,  and 
others  who  sympathised  with  them  both  within  and 
outside  the  University,  had  grown  into  what  those 
who  disliked  them  naturally  called  a  party.  The 
Hampden  controversy,  though  but  an  episode  in  the 
history  of  the  movement,  was  an  important  one,  and 
undoubtedly  gave  a  great  impulse  to  it.  Dr.  H amp- 
den's  attitude  and  language  seemed  to  be  its  justifica- 
tion— a  palpable  instance  of  what  the  Church  had  to 
expect.  And  in  this  controversy,  though  the  feeling 
against  Dr.  Hampden's  views  was  so  widely  shared, 
and  though  the  majority  which  voted  against  him  was 
a  very  mixed  one,  and  contained  some  who  hoped 
that  the  next  time  they  were  called  to  vote  it  might 
be  against  the  Tractarians,  yet  the  leaders  of  the 
movement  had  undertaken  the  responsibility,  conspic- 
uously and  almost  alone,  of  pointing  out  definitely 
and  argumentatively  the  objections  to  Dr.  Hampden's 
teaching.  The  number  of  Mr.  Newman's  friends 
might  be,  as  Mr.  Palmer  says,  insignificant,  but  it  was 


i $6  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

they  who  had  taken  the  trouble  to  understand  and 
give  expression  to  the  true  reasons  for  alarm.1  Even 
in  this  hasty  and  imperfect  way,  the  discussion  revealed 
to  many  how  much  deeper  and  more  serious  the  treat- 
ment of  the  subject  was  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Newman 
and  Dr.  Pusey  compared  with  the  ordinary  criticisms 
on  Dr.  Hampden.  He  had  learned  in  too  subtle  a 
school  to  be  much  touched  by  the  popular  exceptions 
to  his  theories,  however  loudly  expressed.  The  mis- 
chief was  much  deeper.  It  was  that  he  had,  uncon- 
sciously, no  doubt,  undermined  the  foundation  of 
definite  Christian  belief,  and  had  resolved  it  into  a 
philosophy,  so-called  scholastic,  which  was  now  ex- 
ploded. It  was  the  sense  of  the  perilous  issues  to 
which  this  diluted  form  of  Blanco  White's  speculations, 
so  recklessly  patronised  by  Whately,  was  leading 
theological  teaching  in  the  University,  which  opened 
the  eyes  of  many  to  the  meaning  of  the  movement, 
and  brought  some  fresh  friends  to  its  side. 

There  was  no  attempt  to  form  a  party,  or  to  prose- 
lytise ;  there  was  no  organisation,  no  distinct  and 
recognised  party  marks.  "  I  would  not  have  it  called 
a  party,"  writes  Dr.  Newman  in  the  Apologia.  But  a 
party  it  could  not  help  being  :  quietly  and  spontane- 
ously it  had  grown  to  be  what  community  of  ideas, 
aims,  and  sympathies,  naturally,  and  without  blame, 
leads  men  to  become.  And  it  had  acquired  a  number 
of  recognised  nicknames,  to  friends  and  enemies  the 
sign  of  growing  concentration.  For  the  questions 
started  in  the  Tracts  and  outside  them  became  of 
increasing  interest  to  the  more  intelligent  men  who 
had  finished  their  University  course  and  were  pre- 

1  "  I  answered,  the  person  whom  we      in  writing,  and  we   ought   to  commit 
were  opposing  had  committed  himself     ourselves  too." — Apologia,  p.  143. 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  157 

paring  to  enter  into  life,  the  Bachelors  and  younger 
Masters    of  Arts.      One   by   one    they    passed    from 
various   states   of  mind  —  alienation,    suspicion,   fear, 
indifference,   blank   ignorance  —  into    a  consciousness 
that   something   beyond   the   mere    commonplace    of 
religious   novelty   and    eccentricity,    of    which    there 
had    been    a  good    deal  recently,   was   before   them  ; 
that  doctrines  and  statements  running  counter  to  the 
received  religious  language  of  the  day,  doctrines  about 
which,  in  confident  prejudice,  they  had  perhaps  bandied 
about  off-hand  judgments,  had  more  to  say  for  them- 
selves than  was  thought  at  first ;    that  the  questions 
thus  raised  drove  them  in  on  themselves,  and  appealed 
to  their  honesty  and  seriousness  ;  and  that,  at  any  rate, 
in  the  men  who  were  arresting   so   much  attention, 
however  extravagant  their  teaching  might  be  called, 
there  was  a  remarkable  degree  of  sober  and  reserved 
force,  an  earnestness  of  conviction  which  could  not  be 
doubted,  an  undeniable  and  subtle  power  of  touching 
souls   and  attracting  sympathies.      One   by  one,   and 
in  many  different  ways,  these  young  men  went  through 
various  stages  of  curiosity,  of  surprise,  of  perplexity,  of 
doubt,  of  misgiving,  of  interest ;  some  were  frightened, 
and  wavered,  and  drew  back  more  or  less  reluctantly ; 
others,   in  spite  of  themselves,   in  spite  of  opposing 
influences,  were  led  on  step  by  step,  hardly  knowing 
whither,   by   a  spell  which    they  could   not  resist,   of 
intellectual,  or  still  more,  moral  pressure.     Some  found 
their  old  home  teaching  completed,  explained,  lighted 
up,  by  that  of  the   new  school.     Others,  shocked  at 
first  at  hearing  the  old  watchwords  and  traditions  of 
their  homes  decried  and  put  aside,  found  themselves, 
when  they  least  expected  it,  passing  from  the  letter 
to  the  spirit,  from  the  technical  and  formal  theory  to 


158  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

the  wide  and  living  truth.  And  thus,  though  many 
of  course  held  aloof,  and  not  a  few  became  hostile,  a 
large  number,  one  by  one,  some  rapidly,  others  slowly, 
some  unreservedly,  others  with  large  and  jealous  re- 
serves, more  and  more  took  in  the  leading  idea  of  the 
movement,  accepted  the  influence  of  its  chiefs,  and 
looked  to  them  for  instruction  and  guidance.  As  it 
naturally  happens,  when  a  number  of  minds  are  drawn 
together  by  a  common  and  strong  interest,  some  men, 
by  circumstances,  or  by  strength  of  conviction,  or  by 
the  mutual  affinities  of  tastes  and  character,  came  more 
and  more  into  direct  personal  and  intimate  relations 
with  the  leaders,  took  service,  as  it  were,  under  them, 
and  prepared  to  throw  themselves  into  their  plans 
of  work.  Others,  in  various  moods,  but  more  in- 
dependent, more  critical,  more  disturbed  about  con- 
sequences, or  unpersuaded  on  special  points,  formed  a 
kind  of  fringe  of  friendly  neutrality  about  the  more 
thoroughgoing  portion  of  the  party.  And  outside  of 
these  were  thoughtful  and  able  men,  to  whom  the 
whole  movement,  with  much  that  was  utterly  displeas- 
ing and  utterly  perplexing,  had  the  interest  of  being  a 
break-up  of  stagnation  and  dull  indolence  in  a  place 
which  ought  to  have  the  highest  spiritual  and  intel- 
lectual aims  ;  who,  whatever  repelled  them,  could  not 
help  feeling  that  great  ideas,  great  prospects,  a  new 
outburst  of  bold  thought,  a  new  effort  of  moral 
purpose  and  force,  had  disturbed  the  old  routine  ; 
could  not  help  being  fascinated,  if  only  as  by  a 
spectacle,  by  the  strange  and  unwonted  teaching, 
which  partly  made  them  smile,  partly  perhaps  per- 
manently disgusted  them,  but  which  also,  they  could 
not  deny,  spoke  in  a  language  more  fearless,  more 
pathetic,  more  subtle,  and  yet  more  human,  than  they 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  159 

had  heard  from  the  religious  teachers  of  the  day. 
And  thus  the  circle  of  persons  interested  in  the  Tracts, 
of  persons  who  sympathised  with  their  views,  of  per- 
sons who  more  and  more  gave  a  warm  and  earnest 
adherence  to  them,  was  gradually  extended  in  the 
University — and,  in  time,  in  the  country  also.  The 
truth  was  that  the  movement,  in  its  many  sides,  had 
almost  monopolised  for  the  time  both  the  intelligence 
and  the  highest  religious  earnestness  of  the  University,1 
and  either  in  curiosity  or  inquiry,  in  approval  or  in 
condemnation,  all  that  was  deepest  and  most  vigorous, 
all  that  was  most  refined,  most  serious,  most  high- 
toned,  and  most  promising  in  Oxford  was  drawn  to 
the  issues  which  it  raised.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to 
say  that  wherever  men  spoke  seriously  of  the  grounds 
and  prospects  of  religion,  in  Oxford,  or  in  Vacation 
reading-parties,  in  their  walks  and  social  meetings,  in 
their  studies  or  in  common-room,  the  "  Tractarian " 
doctrines,  whether  assented  to  or  laughed  at,  de- 
plored or  fiercely  denounced,  were  sure  to  come  to 
the  front.  All  subjects  in  discussion  seemed  to  lead 
up  to  them — art  and  poetry,  Gothic  architecture  and 
German  romance  and  painting,  the  philosophy  of 
language,  and  the  novels  of  Walter  Scott  and  Miss 
Austen,  Coleridge's  transcendentalism  and  Bishop 
Butler's  practical  wisdom,  Plato's  ideas  and  Aristotle's 
analysis.  It  was  difficult  to  keep  them  out  of  lecture- 
rooms  and  examinations  for  Fellowships. 

But    in    addition    to   the    intrinsic  interest  of  the 
questions  and  discussions  which  the  movement  opened, 

1   "  I  very  much  doubt  between  Ox-  Rabbinists,  i.e.  Puseyites."  But  this  was 

ford  and  Cambridge  for  my  boy.     Ox-  probably  an  exaggeration. — Whately's 

ford,  which  I  should  otherwise  prefer,  Life  ;  letter  of  Oct.  1838,  p.  163  (ed. 

on  many  accounts,  has  at  present  two-  1875). 
thirds    of    the    steady  -  reading    men, 


160  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

personal  influence  played  a  great  and  decisive  part  in 
it.  As  it  became  a  party,  it  had  chiefs.  It  was  not 
merely  as  leaders  of  thought  but  as  teachers  with  their 
disciples,  as  friends  with  friends,  as  witnesses  and 
examples  of  high  self-  rule  and  refined  purity  and 
goodness,  that  the  chiefs  whose  names  were  in  all 
men's  mouths  won  the  hearts  and  trust  of  so  many, 
in  the  crowds  that  stood  about  them.  Foremost,  of 
course,  ever  since  he  had  thrown  himself  into  it  in 
1835,  was  Dr.  Pusey.  His  position,  his  dignified 
office,  his  learning,  his  solidity  and  seriousness  of 
character,  his  high  standard  of  religious  life,  the 
charm  of  his  charity,  and  the  sweetness  of  his  temper 
naturally  gave  him  the  first  place  in  the  movement  in 
Oxford  and  the  world.  It  came  to  be  especially 
associated  with  him.  Its  enemies  fastened  on  it  a 
nickname  from  his  name,  and  this  nickname,  partly 
from  a  greater  smoothness  of  sound,  partly  from  an 
odd  suggestion  of  something  funny  in  it,  came  more 
into  use  than  others ;  and  the  terms  Puseismus, 
Pusdisme,  Piiseista  found  their  way  into  German 
lecture -halls  and  Paris  salons  and  remote  convents 
and  police  offices  in  Italy  and  Sicily  ;  indeed,  in  the 
shape  of  nov^eicr/Ao?  it  might  be  lighted  on  in  a  Greek 
newspaper.  Dr.  Pusey  was  a  person  who  commanded 
the  utmost  interest  and  reverence ;  he  was  more  in 
communication  with  the  great  world  outside  than 
Oxford  people  generally,  and  lived  much  in  retirement 
from  Oxford  society ;  but  to  all  interested  in  the 
movement  he  was  its  representative  and  highest 
authority.  He  and  Mr.  Newman  had  the  fullest 
confidence  in  one  another,  though  conscious  at  times 
of  not  perfect  agreement ;  yet  each  had  a  line  of  his 
own,  and  each  of  them  was  apt  to  do  things  out  of 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  161 

his  own  head.  Dr.  Pusey  was  accessible  to  all  who 
wished  to  see  him  ;  but  he  did  not  encourage  visits 
which  wasted  time.  And  the  person  who  was  pre- 
eminently, not  only  before  their  eyes,  but  within 
their  reach  in  the  ordinary  intercourse  of  man  with 
man,  was  Mr.  Newman.  Mr.  Newman,  who  lived 
in  College  in  the  ordinary  way  of  a  resident  Fellow, 
met  other  university  men,  older  or  younger,  on 
equal  terms.  As  time  went  on,  a  certain  wonder 
and  awe  gathered  round  him.  People  were  a  little 
afraid  of  him  ;  but  the  fear  was  in  themselves,  not 
created  by  any  intentional  stiffness  or  coldness  on 
his  part.  He  did  not  try  to  draw  men  to  him,  he  was 
no  proselytiser ;  he  shrank  with  fear  and  repugnance 
from  the  character — it  was  an  invasion  of  the  privileges 
of  the  heart.1  But  if  men  came  to  him,  he  was  ac- 
cessible ;  he  allowed  his  friends  to  bring  their  friends 
to  him,  and  met  them  more  than  half-way.  He  was 
impatient  of  mere  idle  worldliness,  of  conceit  and  im- 
pertinence, of  men  who  gave  themselves  airs  ;  he  was 
very  impatient  of  pompous  and  solemn  emptiness. 
But  he  was  very  patient  with  those  whom  he  believed 
to  sympathise  with  what  was  nearest  his  heart ;  no 
one,  probably,  of  his  power  and  penetration  and  sense 
of  the  absurd,  was  ever  so  ready  to  comply  with  the 
two  demands  which  a  witty  prelate  proposed  to  put 
into  the  examination  in  the  Consecration  Service  of 
Bishops:  "Wilt  thou  answer  thy  letters?"  "  Wilt 
thou  suffer  fools  gladly  ?  "  But  courteous,  affable,  easy 
as  he  was,  he  was  a  keen  trier  of  character ;  he 
gauged,  and  men  felt  that  he  gauged,  their  motives, 

1  "The  sagacious  and  aspiring  man      leges  and  rights. " — Prophetical  Office  of 
of   the    world,    the   scrutiniser    of   the      the  Church,  p.  132. 
heart,  the  conspirator  against  its  privi- 

M 


162  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

their  reality  and  soundness  of  purpose  ;  he  let  them 
see,  if  they  at  all  came  into  his  intimacy,  that  if  they 
were  not,  he,  at  any  rate,  was  in  the  deepest  earnest. 
And  at  an  early  period,  in  a  memorable  sermon,1  the 
vivid  impression  of  which  at  the  time  still  haunts  the 
recollection  of  some  who  heard  it,  he  gave  warning  to 
his  friends  and  to  those  whom  his  influence  touched, 
that  no  child's  play  lay  before  them  ;  that  they  were 
making,  it  might  be  without  knowing  it,  the  "  Ventures 
of  Faith."  But  feeling  that  he  had  much  to  say,  and 
that  a  university  was  a  place  for  the  circulation  and 
discussion  of  ideas,  he  let  himself  be  seen  and  known 
and  felt,  both  publicly  and  in  private.  He  had  his 
breakfast  parties  and  his  evening  gatherings.  His  con- 
versation ranged  widely,  marked  by  its  peculiar  stamp 
—entire  ease,  unstudied  perfection  of  apt  and  clean- 
cut  words,  unexpected  glimpses  of  a  sure  and  piercing 
judgment.  At  times,  at  more  private  meetings,  the 
violin,  which  he  knew  how  to  touch,  came  into  play. 

He  had  great  gifts  for  leadership.  But  as  a 
party  chief  he  was  also  deficient  in  some  of  the 
qualities  which  make  a  successful  one.  His  doctrine 
of  the  Church  had  the  disadvantage  of  an  apparently 
intermediate  and  ambiguous  position,  refusing  the 
broad,  intelligible  watchwords  and  reasonings  of 
popular  religionism.  It  was  not  without  clearness  and 
strength  ;  but  such  a  position  naturally  often  leads  to 
what  seem  over-subtle  modes  of  argument,  seemingly 
over- subtle  because  deeper  and  more  original  than 
the  common  ones  ;  and  he  seemed  sometimes  to  want 
sobriety  in  his  use  of  dialectic  weapons,  which  he 
wielded  with  such  force  and  effect.  Over-subtlety  in 
the  leader  of  a  party  tends  to  perplex  friends  and  give 

1  Parochial  Sermons,  iv.  20.      Feb.   1836. 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  163 

a  handle  to  opponents.     And  with  all  his  confidence 
in  his  cause,  and  also  in  his  power  and  his  call  to  use 
it,  he  had  a  curious  shyness  and  self-distrust  as  to  his 
own  way  of  doing  what  he  had  to  do ;  he  was  afraid 
of  "  wilfulness,"  of  too  great  reliance  on  intellect.     He 
had    long    been    accustomed    to   observe   and    judge 
himself,  and  while  conscious  of  his  force,  he  was  fully 
alive  to  the  drawbacks,  moral  and  intellectual,  which 
wait  on  the  highest  powers.    When  attacks  were  made 
on  him  by  authorities,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Tract  No. 
90,  his  more  eager  friends  thought  him  too  submissive  ; 
they  would  have  liked  a  more  combative  temper  and 
would  not  accept  his  view  that  confidence  in  him  was 
lost,   because   it   might   be   shaken.1     But   if   he  bent 
before  official  authority  the  disapproval  of  friends  was 
a  severer  trouble.     Most  tender  in  his  affections,  most 
trustful   in   his  confidence,    craving    for    sympathy,   it 
came  like  a  shock  and  chill  when  things  did  not  go 
right  between  himself  and  his  friends.      He  was  too 
sensitive  under  such  disapproval  for  a  successful  party 
chief.     The   true  party  leader   takes   these  things  as 
part  of  that  tiresome  human  stupidity  and  perverse- 
ness  with  which  he  must  make  his  account.     Perhaps 
they  sting  for  the  moment,  but  he  brushes  them  away 
and  goes   forward,   soon   forgetting  them.      But  with 
Mr.  Newman,  his  cause  was  identified  with  his  friend- 
ships and  even  his  family  affections.     And  as  a  leader, 
he  was  embarrassed  by  the  keenness  with  which  he 


1   Vide  J.  B.  Mozley,  Letters,  pp.  1 14,  was  irrelevant  to  the  present  occasion, 

115.    "  Confidence  in  me  was  lost,  but  I  the  question  being  simply  on  a  point 

had  already  lost  confidence  in  myself."  of  theological    interpretation.     I   have 

This,    to   a  friend  like  J.   B.   Mozley,  always  had  a  prejudice  against  general 

seemed    exaggeration.      "  Though    ad-  confessions."     Mozley  plainly  thought 

miring    the    letter  [to   the  Vice-Chan-  Newman's     attitude    too     meek :    he 

cellor]  I   confess,  for  my  own  part,   I  would    have    liked    something     more 

think  a  general  confession  of  humility  spirited  and  pugnacious. 


164   '  THE  OXFORD  MO  VEMENT  CHAP. 

sympathised  with    the    doubts   and   fears   of  friends  ; 
want  of  sympathy  and  signs  of  distrust  darkened  the 
prospect  of  the  future ;  they  fell  like  a  blight  on  his 
stores  of  hope,  never  over -abundant ;    they  tempted 
him,  not  to  assert  himself,  but  to  throw  up  the  game 
as  convicted  of  unfitness,  and  retire  for  good  and  all 
to  his  books  and  silence.     "  Let  them,"  he  seemed  to 
say,   "have  their  way,  as  they  will  not  let  me  have 
mine ;  they  have  the  right  to  take  theirs,  only  not  to 
make  me   take   it."     In   spite  of  his  enthusiasm   and 
energy,  his  unceasing  work,  his  occasional   bursts  of 
severe  punishment  inflicted  on  those  who  provoked  him, 
there  was  always  present  this  keen  sensitiveness,  the 
source  of  so  much  joy  and  so  much  pain.     He  would 
not  have  been  himself  without  it.     But  he  would  have 
been  a  much  more  powerful  and  much  more  formidable 
combatant   if  he  had  cared  less  for  what  his   friends 
felt,   and   followed   more  unhesitatingly  his   own   line 
and  judgment.    This  keen  sensitiveness  made  him  more 
quickly  alive  than  other  people  to  all  that  lay  round 
him    and    before ;    it    made    him    quicker    to    discern 
danger  and  disaster ;  it  led  him  to  give  up  hope  and 
to  retire  from  the  contest  long  before  he  had  a  right 
to  do  so.     The  experience  of  later  years  shows  that 
he  had  despaired  too  soon.     Such  delicate  sensitive- 
ness, leading  to  impatience,  was  not  capable  of  coping 
with  the  rough  work  involved  in  the  task  of  reform, 
which  he  had  undertaken. 

All  this  time  the  four  o'clock  sermons  at  St. 
Mary's  were  always  going  on.  But,  besides  these, 
he  anticipated  a  freedom — familiar  now,  but  unknown 
then — of  public  lecturing.  In  Advent  and  after  Easter 
a  company,  never  very  large,  used  to  gather  on  a  week- 
day afternoon  in  Adam  de  Brome's  Chapel — the  old 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  163 

Chapel  of  "  Our   Lady  of  Littlemore  " — to  hear  him 
lecture   on    some  theological    subject.     It   is  a  dark, 
dreary  appendage  to  St.   Mary's  on  the  north  side,  in 
which  Adam  de  Brome,  Edward  II's  almoner,  and  the 
founder  of  Oriel  College,  is  supposed  to  lie,  beneath 
an  unshapely  tomb,  covered  by  a  huge  slab  of  Purbeck 
marble,  from  which  the  brass  has  been  stripped.     The 
place  is  called  a  chapel,  but  is  more  like  a  court  or 
place  of  business,   for  which,   indeed,  it  was  used  in 
the  old  days  by  one  of  the  Faculties  of  the  House  of 
Convocation,  which  held  its  assemblies  there.     At  the 
end  is  a  high  seat  and  desk  for  the  person  presiding, 
and  an  enclosure  and  a  table  for  officials  below  him ; 
and   round  the   rest  of  the   dingy  walls  run  benches 
fixed  to  the  wall,  dingy  as  the  walls  themselves.     But 
it  also  had  another  use.     On  occasions  of  a  university 
sermon,  a  few  minutes  before  it  began,  the  Heads  of 
Houses  assembled,  as  they  still  assemble,  in  the  chapel, 
ranging  themselves  on  the  benches  round  the  walls. 
The  Vice -Chancellor  has  his  seat  on  one  side,  the 
preacher,    with    the    two    Proctors    below    him,    sits 
opposite ;    and   there  all   sit  in  their  robes,  more  or 
less  grand,  according  to  the  day,  till  the  beadle  comes 
to  announce  that  it  is  time  to  form  the  procession  into 
church.     This  desolate  place  Mr.  Newman  turned  into 
his  lecture-room ;  in  it  he  delivered  the  lectures  which 
afterwards    became    the    volume   on    the   Prophetical 
Character  of  the  Church,  or  Romanism  and  Popular 
Protestantism ;  the  lectures  which  formed  the  volume 
on  Justification ;  those  on  Antichrist,  and  on  Ration- 
alism and  the  Canon  of  Scripture,  which  afterwards 
became  Nos.  83  and  85  of  the  Tracts  for  the  Times? 

1  Romanism  and  Popular  Protest-  1837,  published  March  1838;  Canon 
antism,  from  183410  1836,  published  of  Scripture,  published  May  1838; 
March  1837  ;  Justification,  after  Easter  Antichrist,  published  June  1838. 


166  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

The  force,  the  boldness,  the  freedom  from  the 
trammels  of  commonplace,  the  breadth  of  view  and 
grasp  of  the  subject  which  marked  those  lectures,  may 
be  seen  in  them  still.  But  it  is  difficult  to  realise  now 
the  interest  with  which  they  were  heard  at  the  time 
by  the  first  listeners  to  that  clear  and  perfectly 
modulated  voice,  opening  to  them  fresh  and  original 
ways  of  regarding  questions  which  seemed  worn  out 
and  exhausted.  The  volumes  which  grew  out  of  the 
Adam  de  Brome  lectures  were  some  of  the  most 
characteristic  portions  of  the  theological  literature  of 
the  early  movement.  They  certainly  greatly  influenced 
the  course  of  thought  in  it,  and  some  of  its  most 
serious  issues. 

The  movement  was  not  one  of  mere  opinion.  It 
took  two  distinct  though  connected  lines.  It  was,  on 
the  one  hand,  theological  ;  on  the  other,  resolutely 
practical.  Theologically,  it  dealt  with  great  questions 
of  religious  principle — What  is  the  Church  ?  Is  it  a 
reality  or  a  mode  of  speech  ?  On  what  grounds  does 
it  rest  ?  How  may  it  be  known  ?  Is  it  among  us  ? 
How  is  it  to  be  discriminated  from  its  rivals  or  counter- 
feits ?  What  is  its  essential  constitution  ?  What 
does  it  teach  ?  What  are  its  shortcomings  ?  Does  it 
need  reform  ?  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  movement 
was  marked  by  its  deep  earnestness  on  the  practical 
side  of  genuine  Christian  life.  Very  early  in  the 
movement  (1833)  a  series  of  sketches  of  primitive 
Christian  life  appeared  in  the  British  Magazine — 
afterwards  collected  under  the  title  of  the  Church 
of  the  Fathers  (1840) — to  remind  people  who  were 
becoming  interested  in  ancient  and  patristic  theology 
that,  besides  the  doctrines  to  be  found  in  the  vast 
folios  of  the  Fathers,  there  were  to  be  sought  in 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  167 

them  and  laid  to  heart  the  temptations  and  trials,  the 
aspirations  and  moral  possibilities  of  actual  life,  "  the 
tone  and  modes  of  thought,  the  habits  and  manners  of 
the  early  times  of  the  Church."  The  note  struck  in 
the  first  of  Mr.  Newman's  published  sermons — "  Holi- 
ness necessary  for  future  blessedness" — was  never 
allowed  to  be  out  of  mind.  The  movement  was, 
above  all,  a  moral  one  ;  it  was  nothing,  allowed  to  be 
nothing,  if  it  was  not  this.1  Seriousness,  reverence, 
the  fear  of  insincere  words  and  unsound  professions, 
were  essential  in  the  character,  which  alone  it  would 
tolerate  in  those  who  made  common  cause  with  it. 

Its  ethical  tendency  was  shown  in  two  things, 
which  were  characteristic  of  it.  One  was  the  increased 
care  for  the  Gospels,  and  study  of  them,  compared  with 
other  parts  of  the  Bible.  Evangelical  theology  had 
dwelt  upon  the  work  of  Christ,  and  laid  comparatively 
little  stress  on  His  example,  or  the  picture  left  us  of 
His  Personality  and  Life.  It  regarded  the  Epistles 
of  St.  Paul  as  the  last  word  of  the  Gospel  message. 
People  who  can  recall  the  popular  teaching,  which  was 
spoken  of  then  as  "  sound  "  and  "  faithful,"  and  "  preach- 
ing Christ,"  can  remember  how  the  Epistles  were  ran- 
sacked for  texts  to  prove  the  "  sufficiency  of  Scripture  " 
or  the  ''right  of  private  judgment,"  or  the  distinc- 
tion between  justification  and  sanctification,  while  the 
Gospel  narrative  was  imperfectly  studied  and  was  felt 
to  be  much  less  interesting.  The  movement  made 

1  Cf.  Lyra  Apostolica,  No.  65  : 
Thou  to  wax  fierce 
In  the  cause  of  the  Lord  ! 

Anger  and  zeal, 
And  the  joy  of  the  brave, 
Who  bade  thee  to  feel, 
Sin's  slave  ? 


1 68  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

a  great  change.  The  great  Name  stood  no  longer  for 
an  abstract  symbol  of  doctrine,  but  for  a  living  Master, 
who  could  teach  as  well  as  save.  And  not  forgetting 
whither  He  had  gone  and  what  He  was,  the  readers 
of  Scripture  now  sought  Him  eagerly  in  those  sacred 
records,  where  we  can  almost  see  and  hear  His  going 
in  and  out  among  men.  It  was  a  change  in  the  look 
and  use  of  Scripture,  which  some  can  still  look  back 
to  as  an  epoch  in  their  religious  history.  The  other 
feature  was  the  increased  and  practical  sense  of  the 
necessity  of  self-discipline,  of  taking  real  trouble  with 
one's  self  to  keep  thoughts  and  wishes  in  order,  to  lay 
the  foundation  of  habits,  to  acquire  the  power  of  self- 
control.  Deeply  fixed  in  the  mind  of  the  teachers, 
this  serious  governance  of  life,  this  direction  and  puri- 
fication of  its  aims,  laid  strong  hold  on  the  consciences 
of  those  who  accepted  their  teaching.  This  training 
was  not  showy  ;  it  was  sometimes  austere,  even  ex- 
travagantly austere ;  but  it  was  true,  and  enduring, 
and  it  issued  often  in  a  steady  and  unconscious  eleva- 
tion of  the  religious  character.  How  this  character 
was  fed  and  nurtured  and  encouraged — how,  too,  it 
was  frankly  warned  of  its  dangers,  may  be  seen  in 
those  Parochial  Sermons  at  St.  Mary's,  under  whose 
inspiration  it  was  developed,  and  which  will  always  be 
the  best  commentary  on  the  character  thus  formed. 
Even  among  those  who  ultimately  parted  from  the 
movement,  with  judgment  more  or  less  unfavourable 
to  its  theology  and  general  line,  it  left,  as  if  unefTace- 
able,  this  moral  stamp  ;  this  value  for  sincerity  and 
simplicity  of  feeling  and  life,  this  keen  sense  of  the 
awfulness  of  things  unseen.  There  was  something 
sui  generis  "in.  the  profoundly  serious,  profoundly 
reverent  tone,  about  everything  that  touched  religion 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  169 

in  all  who  had  ever  come  strongly  under  its 
influence. 

Of  course  the  party  soon  had  the  faults  of  a  party, 
real  and  imputed.1  Is  it  conceivable  that  there  should 
ever  have  been  a  religious  movement,  which  has  not 
provoked  smiles  from  those  outside  of  it,  and  which  has 
not  lent  itself  to  caricature  ?  There  were  weaker 
members  of  it,  and  headstrong  ones,  and  imitative 
ones ;  there  were  grotesque  and  absurd  ones ;  some 
were  deeper,  some  shallower ;  some  liked  it  for  its 
excitement,  and  some  liked  it  for  its  cause ;  there  were 
those  who  were  for  pushing  on,  and  those  who  were 
for  holding  back  ;  there  were  men  of  combat,  and  men 
of  peace ;  there  were  those  whom  it  made  conceited 
and  self-important,  and  those  whom  it  drove  into 
seriousness,  anxiety,  and  retirement.  But,  whatever 
faults  it  had,  a  pure  and  high  spirit  ruled  in  it ;  there 
were  no  disloyal  members,  and  there  were  none  who 
sought  their  own  in  it,  or  thought  of  high  things  for 
themselves  in  joining  it.  It  was  this  whole-hearted- 
ness,  this  supreme  reverence  for  moral  goodness,  more 
even  than  the  great  ability  of  the  leaders,  and  in  spite 
of  mistakes  and  failures,  which  gave  its  cohesion  and 
its  momentum  to  the  movement  in  its  earlier  stages. 

The  state  of  feeling  and  opinion  among  Church- 
men towards  the  end  of  1835,  two  years  after  the 
Tracts  had  begun,  is  thus  sketched  by  one  who  was 
anxiously  observing  it,  in  the  preface  to  the  second 
volume  of  the  Tracts  (November  1835). 

In  completing  the  second  volume  of  a  publication,  to  which  the 
circumstances  of  the  day  have  given  rise,  it  may  be  right  to  allude 
to  a  change  which  has  taken  place  in  them  since  the  date  of  its 

1  This    weak    side    was    portrayed      Mr.  Newman  in  1848,  after  he  left  the 
with  severity  in  a  story  published  by      English  Church — Loss  and  Gain. 


i;o  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

commencement.  At  that  time,  in  consequence  of  long  security, 
the  attention  of  members  of  our  Church  had  been  but  partially 
engaged,  in  ascertaining  the  grounds  of  their  adherence  to  it ;  but 
the  imminent  peril  to  all  which  is  dear  to  them  which  has  since  been 
confessed,  has  naturally  turned  their  thoughts  that  way,  and  obliged 
them  to  defend  it  on  one  or  other  of  the  principles  which  are  usually 
put  forward  in  its  behalf.  Discussions  have  thus  been  renewed  in 
various  quarters,  on  points  which  had  long  remained  undisturbed ; 
and  though  numbers  continue  undecided  in  opinion,  or  take  up  a 
temporary  position  in  some  one  of  the  hundred  middle  points  which 
may  be  assumed  between  the  two  main  theories  in  which  the  ques- 
tion issues ;  and  others,  again,  have  deliberately  entrenched  them- 
selves in  the  modern  or  ultra -Protestant  alternative;  yet,  on  the 
whole,  there  has  been  much  hearty  and  intelligent  adoption,  and 
much  respectful  study,  of  those  more  primitive  views  maintained  by 
our  great  Divines.  As  the  altered  state  of  public  information  and 
opinion  has  a  necessary  bearing  on  the  efforts  of  those  who  desire 
to  excite  attention  to  the  subject  (in  which  number  the  writers  of 
these  Tracts  are  to  be  included),  it  will  not  be  inappropriate  briefly 
to  state  in  this  place  what  it  is  conceived  is  the  present  position  of 
the  great  body  of  Churchmen  with  reference  to  it. 

While  we  have  cause  to  be  thankful  for  the  sounder  and  more 
accurate  language,  which  is  now  very  generally  adopted  among  well- 
judging  men  on  ecclesiastical  subjects,  we  must  beware  of  over- 
estimating what  has  been  done,  and  so  becoming  sanguine  in  our 
hopes  of  success,  or  slackening  our  exertions  to  secure  it.  Many 
more  persons,  doubtless,  have  taken  up  a  profession  of  the  main 
doctrine  in  question,  that,  namely,  of  the  one  Catholic  and  Apostolic 
Church,  than  fully  enter  into  it.  This  was  to  be  expected,  it  being  the 
peculiarity  of  all  religious  teaching,  that  words  are  imparted  before 
ideas.  A  child  learns  his  Creed  or  Catechism  before  he  understands 
it ;  and  in  beginning  any  deep  subject  we  are  all  but  children  to  the 
end  of  our  lives.  The  instinctive  perception  of  a  rightly  instructed 
mind,  the  / rima  facie  force  of  the  argument,  or  the  authority  of  our 
celebrated  writers,  have  all  had  their  due  and  extensive  influence  in 
furthering  the  reception  of  the  doctrine,  when  once  it  was  openly 
maintained ;  to  which  must  be  added  the  prospect  of  the  loss  of 
State  protection,  which  made  it  necessary  to  look  out  for  other 
reasons  for  adherence  to  the  Church  besides  that  of  obedience  to 
the  civil  magistrate.  Nothing  which  has  spread  quickly  has  been 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  171 

received  thoroughly.  Doubtless  there  are  a  number  of  seriously- 
minded  persons  who  think  that  they  admit  the  doctrine  in  question 
much  more  fully  than  they  do,  and  who  would  be  startled  at  seeing 
that  realised  in  particulars  which  they  confess  in  an  abstract  form. 
Many  there  are  who  do  not  at  all  feel  that  it  is  capable  of  a  practical 
application ;  and  while  they  bring  it  forward  on  special  occasions, 
in  formal  expositions  of  faith,  or  in  answer  to  a  direct  interrogatory, 
let  it  slip  from  their  minds  almost  entirely  in  their  daily  conduct  or 
their  religious  teaching,  from  the  long  and  inveterate  habit  of  think- 
ing and  acting  without  it.  We  must  not,  then,  at  all  be  surprised 
at  finding  that  to  modify  the  principles  and  motives  on  which  men 
act  is  not  the  work  of  a  day ;  nor  at  undergoing  disappointments, 
at  witnessing  relapses,  misconceptions,  sudden  disgusts,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  abuses  and  perversions  of  the  true  doctrine,  in  the  case 
of  those  who  have  taken  it  up  with  more  warmth  than  discernment. 

From  the  end  of  1835,  or  tne  beginning  of  1836, 
the  world  outside  of  Oxford  began  to  be  alive  to  the 
force  and  the  rapid  growth  of  this  new  and,  to  the  world 
at  large,  not  very  intelligible  movement.  The  ideas 
which  had  laid  hold  so  powerfully  on  a  number  of 
leading  minds  in  the  University  began  to  work  with 
a  spell,  which  seemed  to  many  inexplicable,  on  others 
unconnected  with  them.  This  rapidity  of  expansion, 
viewed  as  a  feature  of  a  party,  was  noticed  on  all 
sides,  by  enemies  no  less  than  friends.  In  an  article 
in  the  British  Critic  of  April  1839,  by  Mr.  Newman, 
on  the  State  of  Religious  Parties,  the  fact  is  illustrated 
from  contemporary  notices. 

There  is  at  the  present  moment  a  reaction  in  the  Church,  and  a 
growing  reaction,  towards  the  views  which  it  has  been  the  endeavours 
[of  the  Tract  writers]  and,  as  it  seemed  at  the  commencement,  almost 
hopeless  endeavours,  to  advocate.  The  fairness  of  the  prospect  at 
present  is  proved  by  the  attack  made  on  them  by  the  public  journals, 
and  is  confessed  by  the  more  candid  and  the  more  violent  among 
their  opponents.  Thus  the  amiable  Mr.  Bickersteth  speaks  of  it  as 


172  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

having  manifested  itself  "  with  the  most  rapid  growth  of  the  hot-bed 
of  these  evil  days."  The  scoffing  author  of  the  Via  Media  says : 
"  At  this  moment  the  Via  is  crowded  with  young  enthusiasts  who 
never  presume  to  argue,  except  against  the  propriety  of  arguing  at 
all"  The  candid  Mr.  Baden-Powell,  who  sees  more  of  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  controversy  than  the  rest  of  their  antagonists  put 
together,  says  that  it  is  clear  that  "these  views  .  .  .  have  been 
extensively  adopted,  and  are  daily  gaining  ground  among  a  con- 
siderable and  influential  portion  of  the  members,  as  well  as  the 
ministers  of  the  Established  Church."  The  author  of  the  Natural 
History  of  Enthusiasm  says:  "The  spread  of  these  doctrines  is  in 
fact  having  the  effect  of  rendering  all  other  distinctions  obsolete. 
Soon  there  will  be  no  middle  ground  left,  and  every  man,  especially 
every  clergyman,  will  be  compelled  to  make  his  choice  between  the 
two."  .  .  .  The  Bishop  of  Chester  speaks  of  the  subject  "  daily 
assuming  a  more  serious  and  alarming  aspect " :  a  gossiping  writer 
of  the  moment  describes  these  doctrines  as  having  insinuated  them- 
selves not  only  into  popular  churches  and  fashionable  chapels,  and 
the  columns  of  newspapers,  but  "  into  the  House  of  Commons." 

And  the  writer  of  the  article  goes  on  : — 

Now,  if  there  be  any  truth  in  these  remarks,  it  is  plainly  idle 
and  perverse  to  refer  the  change  of  opinions  which  is  now  going  on 
to  the  acts  of  two  or  three  individuals,  as  is  sometimes  done.  Of 
course  every  event  in  human  affairs  has  a  beginning ;  and  a  begin- 
ning implies  a  when,  and  a  where,  and  a  by  whom,  and  how.  But 
except  in  these  necessary  circumstances,  the  phenomenon  in  ques- 
tion is  in  a  manner  quite  independent  of  things  visible  and  historical. 
It  is  not  here  or  there ;  it  has  no  progress,  no  causes,  no  fortunes  : 
it  is  not  a  movement,  it  is  a  spirit,  it  is  a  spirit  afloat,  neither  "  in 
the  secret  chambers"  nor  "in  the  desert,"  but  everywhere.  It  is 
within  us,  rising  up  in  the  heart  where  it  was  least  expected,  and 
working  its  way,  though  not  in  secret,  yet  so  subtly  and  impalpably, 
as  hardly  to  admit  of  precaution  or  encounter  on  any  ordinary 
human  rules  of  opposition.  It  is  an  adversary  in  the  air,  a  some- 
thing one  and  entire,  a  whole  wherever  it  is,  unapproachable  and 
incapable  of  being  grasped,  as  being  the  result  of  causes  far  deeper 
than  political  or  other  visible  agencies,  the  spiritual  awakening  of 
spiritual  wants. 


x  GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  173 

Nothing  can  show  more  strikingly  the  truth  of  this  representa- 
tion than  to  refer  to  what  may  be  called  the  theological  history  of 
the  individuals  who,  whatever  be  their  differences  from  each  other 
on  important  or  unimportant  points,  yet  are  associated  together  in 
the  advocacy  of  the  doctrines  in  question.  Dr.  Hook  and  Mr. 
Churton  represent  the  High  Church  dignitaries  of  the  last  genera- 
tion ;  Mr.  Perceval,  the  Tory  aristocracy ;  Mr.  Keble  is  of  the 
country  clergy,  and  comes  from  valleys  and  woods,  far  removed 
both  from  notoriety  and  noise ;  Mr.  Palmer  and  Mr.  Todd  are  of 
Ireland ;  Dr.  Pusey  became  what  he  is  from  among  the  Universities 
of  Germany,  and  after  a  severe  and  tedious  analysis  of  Arabic  MSS. 
Mr.  Dodsworth  is  said  to  have  begun  in  the  study  of  Prophecy; 
Mr.  Newman  to  have  been  much  indebted  to  the  friendship  of 
Archbishop  Whately ;  Mr.  Froude,  if  any  one,  gained  his  views  from 
his  own  mind.  Others  have  passed  over  from  Calvinism  and 
kindred  religions. 

Years  afterwards,  and  in  changed  circumstances,  the 
same  writer  has  left  the  following  record  of  what  came 
before  his  experience  in  those  years  : — x 

From  beginnings  so  small  (I  said),  from  elements  of  thought  so 
fortuitous,  with  prospects  so  unpromising,  the  Anglo-Catholic  party 
suddenly  became  a  power  in  the  National  Church,  and  an  object  of 
alarm  to  her  rulers  and  friends.  Its  originators  would  have  found 
it  difficult  to  say  what  they  aimed  at  of  a  practical  kind :  rather,  they 
put  forth  views  and  principles,  for  their  own  sake,  because  they  were 
true,  as  if  they  were  obliged  to  say  them ;  and,  as  they  might  be 
themselves  surprised  at  their  earnestness  in  uttering  them,  they  had 
as  great  cause  to  be  surprised  at  the  success  which  attended  their 
propagation.  And,  in  fact,  they  could  only  say  that  those  doctrines 
were  in  the  air ;  that  to  assert  was  to  prove,  and  that  to  explain  was 
to  persuade  ;  and  that  the  movement  in  which  they  were  taking  part 
was  the  birth  of  a  crisis  rather  than  of  a  place.  In  a  very  few  years 
a  school  of  opinion  was  formed,  fixed  in  its  principles,  indefinite 
and  progressive  in  their  range;  and  it  extended  itself  into  every  part 
of  the  country.  If  we  inquire  what  the  world  thought  of  it,  we 
have  still  more  to  raise  our  wonder ;  for,  not  to  mention  the  excite- 

1  Apologia,  p.  156. 


174  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  x 

ment  it  caused  in  England,  the  movement  and  its  party-names  were 
known  to  the  police  of  Italy  and  to  the  backwoodmen  of  America. 
And  so  it  proceeded,  getting  stronger  and  stronger  every  year,  till  it 
came  into  collision  with  the  Nation  and  that  Church  of  the  Nation, 
which  it  began  by  professing  especially  to  serve. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    ROMAN    QUESTION 

THE  Hampden  controversy  had  contributed  to  bring 
to  the  front  a  question,  which  from  the  first  starting 
of  the  Tracts  had  made  itself  felt,  but  which  now 
became  a  pressing  one.  If  the  Church  of  England 
claimed  to  be  part  of  the  Catholic  Church,  what  was 
the  answer  of  the  Church  of  England  to  the  claims 
and  charges  of  the  Church  of  Rome  ?  What  were  the 
true  distinctions  between  the  doctrines  of  the  two 
Churches  on  the  great  points  on  which  they  were 
supposed  to  be  at  issue  ?  The  vague  outcry  of 
Popery  had  of  course  been  raised  both  against  the 
general  doctrine  of  the  Church,  enforced  in  the  Tracts, 
and  against  special  doctrines  and  modes  of  speaking, 
popularly  identified  with  Romanism  ;  and  the  answer 
had  been  an  appeal  to  the  authority  of  the  most 
learned  and  authoritative  of  our  writers.  But,  of 
course,  to  the  general  public  this  learning  was  new  ; 
and  the  cry  went  on  with  a  dreary  and  stupid  mono- 
tony. But  the  charges  against  Dr.  Hampden  led  his 
defenders,  to  adopt  as  their  best  weapon  an  aggressive 
policy.  To  the  attack  on  his  orthodoxy,  the  counter 
buffet  was  the  charge  against  his  chief  opponents  of 
secret  or  open  Romanising.  In  its  keenest  and  most 


176  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

popular  form  it  was  put  forth  in  a  mocking  pamphlet 
written  probably  under  Whately's  inspiration  by  his 
most  trusted  confidant,  Dr.  Dickinson,  in  which,  in 
the  form  of  a  "  Pastoral  Epistle  from  his  Holiness  the 
Pope  to  some  Members  of  the  University  of  Oxford," 
the  Tract-writers  are  made  to  appear  as  the  emissaries 
and  secret  tools  of  Rome,  as  in  a  jeu  c£  esprit  of 
Whately's  they  are  made  to  appear  as  the  veiled 
prophets  of  infidelity.1  It  was  clever,  but  not  clever 
enough  to  stand,  at  least  in  Oxford,  against  Dr. 
Pusey's  dignified  and  gravely  earnest  Remonstrance 
against  its  injustice  and  trifling.  But  the  fire  of  all 
Dr.  Hampden's  friends  had  been  drawn  on  the  leaders 
of  the  movement.  With  them,  and  almost  alone  with 
them,  the  opposition  to  him  was  made  a  personal 
matter.  As  time  went  on,  those  who  had  been  as 
hot  as  they  against  Dr.  Hampden  managed  to  get 
their  part  in  the  business  forgotten.  Old  scores 
between  Orthodox,  Evangelicals,  and  Liberals  were 
wiped  out,  and  the  Tractarians  were  left  to  bear 
alone  the  odium  of  the  "  persecution  "  of  Dr.  Hamp- 
den. It  must  be  said  that  they  showed  no  signs  of 
caring  for  it. 

But  the  Roman  controversy  was  looming  in  earnest, 
and  it  was  idle  to  expect  to  keep  it  long  out  of  sight. 
The  Tracts  had  set  forth  with  startling  vehemence 
the  forgotten  claims  of  the  Church.  One  reason  why 
this  had  been  done  was  the  belief,  as  stated  in  the  first 
volume  of  them,  "  that  nothing  but  these  neglected 
doctrines,  faithfully  preached,  will  repress  the  exten- 
sion of  Popery,  for  which  the  ever-multiplying  divisions 
of  the -religious  world  are  too  clearly  preparing  the 
way."2  The  question,  What  is  the  Church  ?  was  one 

1  Whately's  Life,  ed.  1875,  pp.  187-190.     -  Advertisement  to  vol.  i.  1st  Nov.  1834. 


xi  THE  ROMAN  QUESTION  177 

which  the  conditions  of  the  times  would  not  permit 
men  any  longer  to  leave  alone.  It  had  become 
urgent  to  meet  it  clearly  and  decisively.  "  We  could 
not  move  a  step  in  comfort  till  this  was  done."  l  "  The 
controversy  with  the  Romanists,"  writes  Mr.  Newman 
in  No.  71  of  the  Tracts,  about  the  end  of  1835,  "has 
overtaken  us  '  like  a  summer's  cloud.'  We  find  our- 
selves in  various  parts  of  the  country  preparing  for  it, 
yet,  when  we  look  back,  we  cannot  trace  the  steps  by 
which  we  arrived  at  our  present  position.  We  do  not 
recollect  what  our  feelings  were  this  time  last  year  on 
the  subject ;  what  was  the  state  of  our  apprehensions 
and  anticipations.  All  we  know  is,  that  here  we  are, 
from  long  security  ignorant  why  we  are  not  Roman 
Catholics,  and  they  on  the  other  side  are  said  to 
be  spreading  and  strengthening  on  all  sides  of  us, 
vaunting  of  their  success,  real  or  apparent,  and  taunt- 
ing us  with  our  inability  to  argue  with  them." 

The  attitude  taken  by  Mr.  Newman  at  this  time, 
as  regards  the  Roman  Church,  both  in  the  Tracts  and 
in  his  book  on  Romanism  and  Popular  Protestantism, 
published  in  the  early  months  of  1836,  was  a  new  one. 
He  had  started,  as  he  tells  us,  with  the  common  belief 
that  the  Pope  was  Antichrist,  and  that  the  case  was  so 
clear  against  the  whole  system,  doctrinal  and  practical, 
of  the  Church  of  Rome,  that  it  scarcely  needed  further 
examination.  His  feeling  against  Rome  had  been 
increased  by  the  fierce  struggle  about  Emancipation, 
and  by  the  political  conduct  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
party  afterwards ;  and  his  growing  dissatisfaction  with 
the  ordinary  Protestantism  had  no  visible  effect  in 
softening  this  feeling.  Hurrell  Froude's  daring  ques- 
tions had  made  his  friends  feel  that  there  might  be 

1   Apologia,  p.  139. 
N 


178  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

more  to  be  known  about  the  subject  than  they  yet 
knew ;  yet  what  the  fellow-travellers  saw  of  things 
abroad  in  their  visit  to  the  South  in  1832  did  not 
impress  them  favourably.  "  They  are  wretched  Tri- 
dentines  everywhere,"  was  Froude's  comment.  But 
attention  had  been  drawn  to  the  subject,  and  its  deep 
interest  and  importance  and  difficulty  recognised.  Men 
began  to  read  with  new  eyes.  Froude's  keen  and 
deep  sense  of  shortcomings  at  home  disposed  him  to 
claim  equity  and  candour  in  judging  of  the  alleged 
faults  and  corruptions  of  the  Church  abroad.  It 
did  more,  it  disposed  him  —  naturally  enough,  but 
still  unfairly,  and  certainly  without  adequate  know- 
ledge— to  treat  Roman  shortcomings  with  an  indul- 
gence which  he  refused  to  English.  Mr.  Newman, 
knowing  more,  and  more  comprehensive  in  his  view 
of  things,  and  therefore  more  cautious  and  guarded 
than  Froude,  was  much  less  ready  to  allow  a  favourable 
interpretation  of  the  obvious  allegations  against  Rome. 
But  thought  and  reading,  and  the  authority  of  our 
own  leading  divines,  had  brought  him  to  the  conviction 
that  whatever  was  to  be  said  against  the  modern 
Roman  Church — and  the  charges  against  it  were 
very  heavy — it  was  still,  amid  serious  corruption  and 
error,  a  teacher  to  the  nations  of  the  Christian  creed 
and  hope ;  it  had  not  forfeited,  any  more  than  the 
English  Church,  its  title  to  be  a  part  of  that  historic 
body  which  connects  us  with  the  Apostles  of  our  Lord. 
It  had  a  strong  and  consistent  theory  to  oppose  to  its 
assailants  ;  it  had  much  more  to  say  for  itself  than  the 
popular  traditions  supposed.  This  was  no  new  idea 
in  Anglican  divinity,  however  ill  it  might  sort  with  the 
current  language  of  Protestant  controversy.  But  our 
old  divines,  more  easily  satisfied  than  we  with  the 


xi  THE  ROMAN  QUESTION  179 

course  of  things  at  home  under  the  protection  of  the 
Stuart  kings,  and  stung  to  bitter  recrimination  by 
the  insults  and  the  unscrupulous  political  intrigues  of 
Roman  Catholic  agents,  had  exhausted  the  language 
of  vituperation  against  a  great  aggressive  rival,  which 
was  threatening  everything  that  they  held  dear.  They 
had  damaged  their  own  character  for  fairness,  and 
overlaid  their  substantial  grounds  of  objection  and 
complaint,  by  this  unbalanced  exaggeration.  Mr. 
Newman,  in  his  study  of  these  matters,  early  saw  both 
the  need  and  the  difficulty  of  discrimination  in  the 
Roman  controversy.  It  had  to  be  waged,  not  as  of 
old,  with  penal  legislation  behind,  but  against  adver- 
saries who  could  now  make  themselves  listened  to, 
and  before  a  public  sufficiently  robust  in  its  Protestant- 
ism, to  look  with  amused  interest  on  a  dialectical 
triumph  of  the  Roman  over  the  Anglican  claims. 
Romanism,  he  thought,  was  fatal  both  to  his  recent 
hopes  for  the  English  Church,  and  to  the  honour  and 
welfare  of  Christianity  at  large.  But  in  opposing  it, 
ground  loosely  taken  of  old  must  be  carefully  ex- 
amined, and  if  untenable,  abandoned.  Arguments 
which  proved  too  much,  which  availed  against  any 
Church  at  all,  must  be  given  up.  Popular  objections, 
arising  from  ignorance  or  misconception,  must  be 
reduced  to  their  true  limits  or  laid  aside.  The  con- 
troversy was  sure  to  be  a  real  one,  and  nothing  but 
what  was  real  and  would  stand  scrutiny  was  worth 
anything  in  it. 

Mr.  Newman  had  always  been  impressed  with 
the  greatness  of  the  Roman  Church.  Of  old  it  had 
seemed  to  him  great  with  the  greatness  of  Antichrist. 
Now  it  seemed  great  with  the  strange  weird  greatness 
of  a  wonderful  mixed  system,  commanding  from  its 


i8o  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

extent  of  sway  and  its  imperial  authority,  complicated 
and  mysterious  in  its  organisation  and  influence,  in  its 
devotion  and  its  superstitions,  and  surpassing  every 
other  form  of  religion  both  in  its  good  and  its  evil.1 
What  now  presented  itself  to  Mr.  Newman's  thoughts, 
instead  of  the  old  notion  of  a  pure  Church  on  one 
side,  and  a  corrupt  Church  on  the  other,  sharply 
opposed  to  one  another,  was  the  more  reasonable 
supposition  of  two  great  portions  of  the  divided 
Church,  each  with  its  realities  of  history  and  fact  and 
character,  each  with  its  special  claims  and  excellences, 
each  with  its  special  sins  and  corruptions,  and  neither 
realising  in  practice  and  fact  all  it  professed  to  be  on 
paper ;  each  of  which  further,  in  the  conflicts  of  past 
days,  had  deeply,  almost  unpardonably,  wronged  the 
other.  The  Church  of  England  was  in  possession, 
with  its  own  call  and  its  immense  work  to  do,  and 
striving  to  do  it.  Whatever  the  Church  of  Rome  was 
abroad,  it  was  here  an  intruder  and  a  disturber.  That 
to  his  mind  was  the  fact  and  the  true  position  of 
things  ;  and  this  ought  to  govern  the  character  and 
course  of  controversy.  The  true  line  was  not  to 
denounce  and  abuse  wholesale,  not  to  attack  with  any 
argument,  good  or  bad,  not  to  deny  or  ignore  what 
was  solid  in  the  Roman  ground,  and  good  and  elevated 
in  the  Roman  system,  but  admitting  all  that  fairly 
ought  to  be  admitted,  to  bring  into  prominence,  not 
for  mere  polemical  denunciation,  but  for  grave  and 

1  Vide  Lyra  Apostolica,  Nos.  170,  172  : 

How  shall  I  name  thee,  Light  of  the  wide  West, 

Or  heinous  error-seat  ?    .    .    .    . 
Oh,  that  thy  creed  were  sound  ! 

For  thou  dost  soothe  the  heart,  thou  Church  of  Rome, 
By  thy  unwearied  watch  and  varied  round 
Of  service,  in  thy  Saviour's  holy  home. 
And  comp.  No.  171,  The  Cruel  Church. 


xi  THE  ROMAN  QUESTION  181 

reasonable  and  judicial  condemnation,  all  that  was 
extravagant  and  arrogant  in  Roman  assumptions,  and 
all  that  was  base,  corrupt,  and  unchristian  in  the  popular 
religion,  which,  with  all  its  claims  to  infallibility  and 
authority,  Rome  not  only  permitted  but  encouraged. 
For  us  to  condemn  Rome  wholesale,  as  was  ordinarily 
the  fashion,  even  in  respectable  writers,  was  as  wrong, 
as  unfair,  as  unprofitable  to  the  cause  of  truth  and 
Christianity,  as  the  Roman  charges  against  us  were 
felt  by  us  to  be  ignorant  and  unjust.  Rome  professes 
like  England  to  continue  the  constitution,  doctrine, 
traditions,  and  spirit  of  the  ancient  and  undivided 
Church  :  and  so  far  as  she  does  so — and  she  does  so 
in  a  great  degree — we  can  have  no  quarrel  with  her. 
But  in  a  great  degree  also,  she  does  this  only  in  pro- 
fession and  as  a  theory  :  she  claims  the  witness  and 
suffrage  of  antiquity,  but  she  interprets  it  at  her  own 
convenience  and  by  her  own  authority.  We  cannot 
claim  exemption  from  mistakes,  from  deviations  from 
our  own  standard  and  principles,  any  more  than  Rome  ; 
but  while  she  remains  as  she  is,  and  makes  the  mon- 
strous claims  of  infallibility  and  supremacy,  there  is 
nothing  for  English  Churchmen  but  to  resist  her. 
Union  is  impossible.  Submission  is  impossible. 
What  we  have  to  beware  of  for  our  own  sake,  as  well 
as  for  our  cause,  are  false  arguments,  unreal  objections, 
ignorant  allegations.  There  is  enough  on  the  very 
surface,  in  her  audacious  assertions  and  high-handed 
changes,  for  popular  arguments  against  her,  without 
having  recourse  to  exaggeration  and  falsehood ;  she 
may  be  a  very  faulty  Church,  without  being  Babylon 
and  Antichrist.  And  in  the  higher  forms  of  argument, 
there  is  abundance  in  those  provinces  of  ancient 
theology  and  ecclesiastical  history  and  law,  which  Pro- 


1 82  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

testant  controversialists  have  commonly  surrendered 
and  left  open  to  their  opponents,  to  supply  a  more 
telling  weapon  than  any  which  these  controversialists 
have  used. 

This  line,  though  substantially  involved  in  the 
theory  of  our  most  learned  divines,  from  Andrewes  to 
Wake,  was  new  in  its  moderation  and  reasonable 
caution ;  in  its  abstention  from  insult  and  vague 
abuse,  in  its  recognition  of  the  primd  facie  strength  of 
much  of  the  Roman  case,  in  its  fearless  attempt,  in 
defiance  of  the  deepest  prejudices,  to  face  the  facts 
and  conditions  of  the  question.  Mr.  Newman  dared 
to  know  and  to  acknowledge  much  that  our  insular 
self-satisfaction  did  not  know,  and  did  not  care  to 
know,  of  real  Christian  life  in  the  Church  of  Rome. 
He  dared  to  admit  that  much  that  was  popularly  held 
to  be  Popish  was  ancient,  Catholic,  edifying ;  he 
dared  to  warn  Churchmen  that  the  loose  unsifted 
imputations,  so  securely  hazarded  against  Rome,  were 
both  discreditable  and  dangerous.  All  this,  from  one 
whose  condemnation  of  Rome  was  decisive  and 
severe,  was  novel.  The  attempt,  both  in  its  spirit 
and  its  ability,  was  not  unworthy  of  being  part  of  the 
general  effort  to  raise  the  standard  of  thought  and 
teaching  in  the  English  Church.  It  recalled  men 
from  slovenly  prejudices  to  the  study  of  the  real  facts 
of  the  living  world.  It  narrowed  the  front  of  battle, 
but  it  strengthened  it  enormously.  The  volume  on 
Romanism  and  Popidar  Protestantism  is  not  an 
exhaustive  survey  of  the  controversy  with  Rome  or  of 
the  theory  of  the  Church.  There  are  great  portions 
of  the  subject,  both  theological  and  historical,  which  it 
did  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  the  book  to  touch.  It 
was  unsystematic  and  incomplete.  But  so  far  as  its 


xi  THE  ROMAN  QUESTION  183 

argument  extended,  it  almost  formed  an  epoch  in  this 
kind  of  controversial  writing.  It  showed  the  com- 
mand of  a  man  of  learning  over  all  the  technical 
points  and  minutiae  of  a  question  highly  scholastical 
in  its  conceptions  and  its  customary  treatment,  and  it 
presented  this  question  in  its  bearings  and  conse- 
quences on  life  and  practice  with  the  freedom  and 
breadth  of  the  most  vigorous  popular  writing.  The 
indictment  against  Rome  was  no  vague  or  general 
one.  It  was  one  of  those  arguments  which  cut  the 
ground  from  under  a  great  established  structure  of 
reasonings  and  proofs.  And  its  conclusions,  clear  and 
measured,  but  stern,  were  the  more  impressive,  be- 
cause they  came  from  one  who  did  not  disguise  his 
feeling  that  there  was  much  in  what  was  preserved  in 
the  Roman  system  to  admire  and  to  learn  from. 

The  point  which  he  chose  for  his  assault  was 
indeed  the  key  of  the  Roman  position — the  doctrine 
of  Infallibility.  He  was  naturally  led  to  this  side  of 
the  question  by  the  stress  which  the  movement  had 
laid  on  the  idea  of  the  Church  as  the  witness  and 
teacher  of  revealed  truth  :  and  the  immediate  chal- 
lenge given  by  the  critics  or  opponents  of  the 
movement  was,  how  to  distinguish  this  lofty  idea  of 
the  Church,  with  its  claim  to  authority,  if  it  was  at  all 
substantial,  from  the  imposing  and  consistent  theory 
of  Romanism.  He  urged  against  the  Roman  claim 
of  Infallibility  two  leading  objections.  One  was  the 
way  in  which  the  assumed  infallibility  of  the  present 
Church  was  made  to  override  and  supersede,  in  fact, 
what  in  words  was  so  ostentatiously  put  forward,  the 
historical  evidence  of  antiquity  to  doctrine,  expressed 
by  the  phrase,  the  "  consent  of  the  Fathers."  The 
other  objection  was  the  inherent  contradiction  of  the 


1 84  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

notion  of  infallibility  to  the  conditions  of  human  recep- 
tion of  teaching  and  knowledge,  and  its  practical 
uselessness  as  an  assurance  of  truth,  its  partly  delu- 
sive, partly  mischievous,  working.  But  he  felt,  as  all 
deep  minds  must  feel,  that  it  is  easier  to  overthrow 
the  Roman  theory  of  Church  authority  than  to 
replace  it  by  another,  equally  complete  and  com- 
manding, and  more  unassailable.  He  was  quite  alive 
to  the  difficulties  of  the  Anglican  position  ;  but  he  was 
a  disciple  in  the  school  of  Bishop  Butler,  and  had 
learned  as  a  first  principle  to  recognise  the  limitations 
of  human  knowledge,  and  the  unphilosophical  folly 
of  trying  to  round  off  into  finished  and  pretentious 
schemes  our  fragmentary  yet  certain  notices  of  our 
own  condition  and  of  God's  dealings  with  it.  He 
followed  his  teacher  in  insisting  on  the  reality  and 
importance  of  moral  evidence  as  opposed  to  demon- 
strative proof;  and  he  followed  the  great  Anglican 
divines  in  asserting  that  there  was  a  true  authority, 
varying  in  its  degrees,  in  the  historic  Church  ;  that  on 
the  most  fundamental  points  of  religion  this  authority 
was  trustworthy  and  supreme ;  that  on  many  other 
questions  it  was  clear  and  weighty,  though  it  could 
not  decide  everything.  This  view  of  the  "  prophetical 
office  of  the  Church  "  had  the  dialectical  disadvantage 
of  appearing  to  be  a  compromise,  to  many  minds  a 
fatal  disadvantage.  It  got  the  name  of  the  Via 
Media;  a  satisfactory  one  to  practical  men  like  Dr. 
Hook,  to  whom  it  recommended  itself  for  use  in 
popular  teaching ;  but  to  others,  in  aftertimes,  an  ill- 
sounding  phrase  of  dislike,  which  summed  up  the 
weakness  of  the  Anglican  case.  Yet  it  only  answered 
to  the  certain  fact,  that  in  the  early  and  undivided 
Church  there  was  such  a  thing  as  authority,  and  there 


xi  THE  ROMAN  QUESTION  185 

was  no  such  thing  known  as  Infallibility.  It  was  an 
appeal  to  the  facts  of  history  and  human  nature 
against  the  logical  exigences  of  a  theory.  Men  must 
transcend  the  conditions  of  our  experience  if  they 
want  the  certainty  which  the  theory  of  Infallibility 
speaks  of. 

There  were  especially  two  weak  points  in  this  view 
of  Anglicanism.  Mr.  Newman  felt  and  admitted 
them,  and  of  course  they  were  forced  on  his  attention 
by  controversialists  on  both  sides ;  by  the  Ultra- 
Protestant  school,  whose  modes  of  dealing  with  Scrip- 
ture he  had  exposed  with  merciless  logic,  and  by  the 
now  eager  Roman  disputants,  of  whom  Dr.  Wiseman 
was  the  able  and  not  over -scrupulous  chief.  The 
first  of  these  points  was  that  the  authority  of  the 
undivided  Church,  which  Anglicanism  invoked,  though 
it  completely  covered  the  great  foundations  of  Chris- 
tian doctrine,  our  faith  as  to  the  nature  of  God,  did 
not  cover  with  equal  completeness  other  important 
points  of  controversy,  such  as  those  raised  at  the 
Reformation  as  to  the  Sacraments,  and  the  justifica- 
tion of  the  sinner.  The  Anglican  answer  was  that 
though  the  formal  and  conciliar  authority  was  not  the 
same  in  each  case,  the  patristic  literature  of  the  time 
of  the  great  councils,  all  that  it  took  for  granted 
and  preserved  as  current  belief  and  practice,  all  that 
resulted  from  the  questions  and  debates  of  the  time, 
formed  a  body  of  proof,  which  carried  with  it  moral 
evidence  only  short  of  authoritative  definition,  and 
was  so  regarded  in  the  Anglican  formularies.  These 
formularies  implied  the  authority  of  the  Church  to 
speak  ;  and  what  was  defined  on  this  authority  was 
based  on  good  evidence,  though  there  were  portions 
of  its  teaching  which  had  even  better.  The  other 


1 86  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

point  was  more  serious.  "  Your  theory,"  was  the 
objection,  "is  nothing  but  a  paper  theory;  it  never 
was  a  reality  ;  it  never  can  be.  There  may  be  an 
ideal  halting-place,  there  is  neither  a  logical  nor  an 
actual  one,  between  Romanism  and  the  ordinary  nega- 
tions of  Protestantism."  The  answer  to  the  challenge 
then  was,  "  Let  us  see  if  it  cannot  be  realised.  It  has 
recognised  foundations  to  build  upon,  and  the  impedi- 
ments and  interruptions  which  have  hindered  it  are 
well  known.  Let  us  see  if  it  will  not  turn  out  some- 
thing more  than  a  paper  theory."  That  was  the 
answer  given  at  the  time,  abandoned  ten  years  after- 
wards. But  this  at  least  may  be  said,  that  the  longer 
experience  of  the  last  fifty  years  has  shown  that  the 
Church  of  England  has  been  working  more  and  more 
on  such  a  theory,  and  that  the  Church  of  England, 
whatever  its  faults  may  be,  is  certainly  not  a  Church 
only  on  paper. 

But  on  the  principles  laid  down  in  this  volume,  the 
Roman  controversy,  in  its  varying  forms,  was  carried 
on — for  the  time  by  Mr.  Newman,  permanently  by 
the  other  leaders  of  the  movement.  In  its  main 
outlines,  the  view  has  become  the  accepted  Anglican 
view.  Many  other  most  important  matters  have 
come  into  the  debate.  The  publicly  altered  at- 
titude of  the  Papacy  has  indefinitely  widened  the 
breach  between  England  and  Rome.  But  the  funda- 
mental idea  of  the  relations  and  character  of  the  two 
Churches  remains  the  same  as  it  was  shadowed  forth 
in  1836. 

One  very  important  volume  on  these  questions 
ought  not  to  be  passed  by  without  notice.  This  was 
the  Treatise  on  the  Church  of  Christ,  1838,  by  Mr. 
W.  Palmer,  who  had  already  by  his  Origines  of  the 


xi  THE  ROMAN  QUESTION  187 

English  Ritual,  1832,  done  much  to  keep  up  that 
interest  of  Churchmen  in  the  early  devotional  language 
of  the  Church,  which  had  first  been  called  forth  by 
Bishop  Lloyd's  lectures  on  the  Prayer  Book.  The 
Treatise  on  the  Church  was  an  honour  to  English 
theology  and  learning ;  in  point  of  plan  and  structure 
we  have  few  books  like  it.1  It  is  comprehensive, 
methodical,  well-compacted,  and,  from  its  own  point  of 
view,  exhaustive.  It  is  written  with  full  knowledge  of 
the  state  of  the  question  at  the  time,  both  on  the 
Anglican  side  and  on  the  Roman.  Its  author  evades 
no  objection,  and  is  aware  of  most.  It  is  rigorous  in 
form,  and  has  no  place  for  anything  but  substantial 
argument.  It  is  a  book  which,  as  the  Apologia 
tells  us,  commanded  the  respect  of  such  an  accom- 
plished controversialist  as  Perrone ;  and,  it  may  be 
added,  of  a  theologian  of  an  opposite  school,  Dr. 
Dollinger.  It  is  alao  one  on  which  the  highest  value 
has  been  set  by  Mr.  Gladstone.  It  is  remarkable  that 
it  did  not  exercise  more  influence  on  religious  thought 
in  Oxford  at  the  critical  time  when  it  appeared.  But 
it  had  defects,  and  the  moment  was  against  it.  It  was 
dry  and  formal — inevitably  so,  from  the  scientific  plan 
deliberately  adopted  for  it ;  it  treated  as  problems  of 
the  theological  schools,  to  be  discussed  by  the  rules  of 
severe  and  passionless  disputation,  questions  which 
were  once  more,  after  the  interval  of  more  than  a 

1   ' '  The  most  important  theological  ceived  at  his  hands.      It    is  indeed    a 

work  which  has  lately  appeared  is  Mr.  work  quite  in  character  with  the  reli- 

Palmer's  Treatise  on  the  Church.   .   .   .  gious  movement  which  has  commenced 

Whatever  judgment  may  be  formed  of  in   various    parts    of  the  Church,  dis- 

the  conclusions  to  which  he  has  come  playing  a  magnificence  of  design  similar 

on  the  variety  of  points  which  he  had  to  that  of  the  Bishop  of  London's  plan 

to    consider,     we    cannot    contemplate  of  fifty  new  churches,  and  Dr.   Pusey, 

without    admiration,     and    (if  it   were  of    Oxford's,  projected   translation    of 

right)     without     envy,     the     thorough  the  Fathers." — Brit.   Crit.  July  1838. 

treatment    which    his    subject    has    re-  Short  Notices. 


1 88  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

century,  beginning  to  touch  hearts  and  consciences, 
and  were  felt  to  be  fraught  with  the  gravest  practical 
issues.  And  Mr.  Newman,  in  his  mode  of  dealing  with 
them,  unsystematic,  incomplete,  unsatisfactory  in  many 
ways  as  it  was,  yet  saw  in  them  not  abstract  and 
scholastic  inquiries,  however  important,  but  matters  in 
which  not  only  sound  argument,  but  sympathy  and 
quick  intelligence  of  the  conditions  and  working  of  the 
living  minds  around  him,  were  needed  to  win  their 
attention  and  interest.  To  persons  accustomed  to 
Mr.  Newman's  habit  of  mind  and  way  of  writing,  his 
ease,  his  frankness,  his  candour,  his  impatience  of  con- 
ventionality, his  piercing  insight  into  the  very  centre 
of  questions,  his  ever-ready  recognition  of  nature  and 
reality,  his  range  of  thought,  his  bright  and  clear  and 
fearless  style  of  argument,  his  undisplayed  but  never 
unfelt  consciousness  of  the  true  awfulness  of  anything 
connected  with  religion,  any  stiff  and  heavy  way  of 
treating  questions  which  he  had  treated  would  have 
seemed  unattractive  and  unpersuasive.  He  had 
spoiled  his  friends  for  any  mere  technical  handling, 
however  skilful,  of  great  and  critical  subjects.  He 
himself  pointed  out  in  a  review  the  unique  merit  and 
the  real  value  of  Mr.  Palmer's  book,  pointing  out  also, 
significantly  enough,  where  it  fell  short,  both  in  sub- 
stance and  in  manner.  Observing  that  the  "  scientific  " 
system  of  the  English  Church  is  not  yet  "  sufficiently 
cleared  and  adjusted,"  and  adding  a  variety  of 
instances  of  this  deficiency,  he  lets  us  see  what  he 
wanted  done,  where  difficulties  most  pressed  upon 
himself,  and  where  Mr.  Palmer  had  missed  the  real 
substance  of  such  difficulties.  Looking  at  it  by  the 
light  of  after-events,  we  can  see  the  contradiction 
and  reaction  produced  by  Mr.  Palmer's  too  optimist 


xi  THE  ROMAN  QUESTION  189 

statements.  Still,  Mr.  Newman's  praise  was  sin- 
cere and  discriminating.  But  Mr.  Palmer's  book, 
though  never  forgotten,  scarcely  became,  what  it  at 
another  time  might  well  have  become,  an  English 
text-book. 


CHAPTER   XII 

CHANGES 

THE  first  seven  years  of  the  movement,  as  it  is  said  in 
the  Apologia,  had  been  years  of  prosperity.  There 
had  been  mistakes  ;  there  had  been  opposition  ;  there 
had  been  distrust  and  uneasiness.  There  was  in  some 
places  a  ban  on  the  friends  of  Mr.  Newman  ;  men 
like  Mr.  James  Mozley  and  Mr.  Mark  Pattison  found 
their  connexion  with  him  a  difficulty  in  the  way  of 
fellowships.  But  on  the  whole,  things  had  gone 
smoothly,  without  any  great  breakdown,  or  any  open 
collision  with  authority.  But  after  1840  another 
period  was  to  begin  of  trouble  and  disaster.  The 
seeds  of  this  had  been  partially  sown  before  in  the 
days  of  quiet,  and  the  time  was  come  for  their  de- 
velopment. Differences  in  the  party  itself  had  been 
growing  sharper ;  differences  between  the  more 
cautious  and  the  more  fearless,  between  the  more 
steady-going  and  the  more  subtle  thinkers.  The 
contrast  between  the  familiar  and  customary,  and  the 
new — between  the  unknown  or  forgotten,  and  a  mass 
of  knowledge  only  recently  realised  —  became  more 
pronounced.  Consequences  of  a  practical  kind,  real 
or  supposed,  began  to  show  themselves,  and  to  press. 
And  above  all,  a  second  generation,  without  the  sober- 


CHAP,  xii  CHANGES  191 

ing  experience  of  the  first,  was  starting  from  where 
the  first  had  reached  to,  and,  in  some  instances,  was 
rising  up  against  their  teachers'  caution  and  patience. 
The  usual  dangers  of  all  earnest  and  aggressive 
assertions  of  great  principles  appeared  :  contempt  for 
everything  in  opinion  and  practice  that  was  not  ad- 
vanced, men  vying  with  each  other  in  bold  inferences, 
in  the  pleasure  of  "  talking  strong."  With  this  grew 
fear  and  exasperation  on  the  other  side,  misunder- 
standings, misgivings,  strainings  of  mutual  confidence, 
within.  Dr.  Hook  alternated  between  violent  bursts 
of  irritation  and  disgust,  and  equally  strong  returns 
of  sympathy,  admiration,  and  gratitude ;  and  he  re- 
presented a  large  amount  of  feeling  among  Church- 
men. It  was  but  too  clear  that  storms  were  at 
hand.  They  came  perhaps  quicker  than  they  were 
anticipated. 

Towards  the  end  of  1838,  a  proposal  was  brought 
forward,  for  which  in  its  direct  aspect  much  might 
plausibly  be  said,  but  which  was  in  intention  and  in- 
directly a  test  question,  meant  to  put  the  Tractarians 
in  a  difficulty,  and  to  obtain  the  weight  of  authority 
in  the  University  against  them.  It  was  proposed  to 
raise  a  subscription,  and  to  erect  a  monument  in 
Oxford,  to  the  martyrs  of  the  Reformation,  Cranmer, 
Ridley,  and  Latimer.  Considering  that  the  current 
and  popular  language  dated  the  Church  of  England 
from  the  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
cited  the  Reformers  as  ultimate  and  paramount  authori- 
ties on  its  doctrine,  there  was  nothing  unreasonable  in 
such  a  proposal.  Dr.  Hook,  strong  Churchman  as  he 
was,  "called  to  union  on  the  principles  of  the  English 
Reformation."  But  the  criticism  which  had  been  set 
afloat  by  the  movement  had  discovered  and  realised, 


1 92  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

what  defenders  of  the  English  Church  had  hitherto 
felt  it  an  act  of  piety  to  disbelieve,  when  put  before 
them  by  Romanists  like  Lingard,  and  radicals  like 
Cobbett,  that  the  Reformers  had  been  accomplices  in 
many  indefensible  acts,  and  had  been  inconsistent  and 
untrustworthy  theologians.  Providentially,  it  was  felt, 
the  force  of  old  convictions  and  tradition  and  the 
historical  events  of  the  time  had  obliged  them  to 
respect  the  essentials  of  Catholic  truth  and  polity  and 
usage  ;  we  owed  to  them  much  that  was  beautiful  and 
devotional  in  the  Prayer  Book ;  and  their  Articles, 
clear  in  all  matters  decided  by  the  early  theology, 
avoided  foreign  extremes  in  dealing  with  later  con- 
troversies. But  their  own  individual  language  was 
often  far  in  advance  of  the  public  and  official  language 
of  formularies,  in  the  direction  of  the  great  Protestant 
authorities  of  Geneva  and  Zurich.  There  were  still, 
even  among  the  movement  party,  many  who  respected 
the  Reformers  for  the  work  which  they  had  attempted, 
and  partly  and  imperfectly  done,  to  be  more  wisely 
and  soberly  carried  on  by  their  successors  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  But  the  charges  against  their 
Calvinistic  and  even  Zwinglian  language  were  hard  to 
parry  ;  even  to  those  who  respected  them  for  their 
connexion  with  our  present  order  of  things,  their 
learning,  their  soundness,  their  authority  appeared  to 
be  greatly  exaggerated ;  and  the  reaction  from  ex- 
cessive veneration  made  others  dislike  and  depreciate 
them.  This  was  the  state  of  feeling  when  the 
Martyrs'  Memorial  was  started.  It  was  eagerly 
pressed  with  ingenious  and  persevering  arguments  by 
Mr.  Golightly,  the  indefatigable  and  long-labouring 
opponent  of  all  that  savoured  of  Tractarianism.  The 
appeal  seemed  so  specious  that  at  first  many  even  of 


xii  CHANGES  193 

the  party  gave  in  their  adhesion.  Even  Dr.  Pusey 
was  disposed  to  subscribe  to  it.  But  Mr.  Newman, 
as  was  natural,  held  aloof;  and  his  friends  for  the 
most  part  did  the  same.  It  was  what  was  expected 
and  intended.  They  were  either  to  commit  themselves 
to  the  Reformation  as  understood  by  the  promoters  of 
the  Memorial ;  or  they  were  to  be  marked  as  showing 
their  disloyalty  to  it.  The  subscription  was  successful. 
The  Memorial  was  set  up,  and  stood,  a  decisive  though 
unofficial  sign  of  the  judgment  of  the  University  against 
them. 

But  the  "  Memorial "  made  little  difference  to  the 
progress  of  the  movement.  It  was  an  indication  of 
hostility  in  reserve,  but  this  was  all ;  it  formed  an 
ornament  to  the  city,  but  failed  as  a  religious  and 
effective  protest.  Up  to  the  spring  of  1839,  Angli- 
canism, placed  on  an  intellectual  basis  by  Mr.  New- 
man, developed  practically  in  different  ways  by  Dr. 
Pusey  and  Dr.  Hook,  sanctioned  in  theory  by  divines 
who  represented  the  old  divinity  of  the  English 
Church,  like  Bishop  Phillpotts  and  Mr.  H.  J.  Rose, 
could  speak  with  confident  and  hopeful  voice.  It 
might  well  seem  that  it  was  on  its  way  to  win  over  the 
coming  generations  of  the  English  clergy.  It  had  on 
its  side  all  that  gives  interest  and  power  to  a  cause, — 
thought,  force  of  character,  unselfish  earnestness ;  it 
had  unity  of  idea  and  agreement  in  purpose,  and  was 
cemented  by  the  bonds  of  warm  affection  and  common 
sympathies.  It  had  the  promise  of  a  nobler  religion, 
as  energetic  and  as  spiritual  as  Puritanism  and  Wes- 
leyanism,  while  it  drew  its  inspiration,  its  canons  of 
doctrine,  its  moral  standards,  from  purer  and  more 
venerable  sources  ; — from  communion,  not  with  indi- 
vidual teachers  and  partial  traditions,  but  with  the 

o 


194  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

consenting    teaching  and   authoritative   documents  of 
the  continuous  Catholic  Church. 

Anglicanism  was  agreed,  up  to  this  time — the  sum- 
mer of  1839 — as  to  its  general  principles.  Charges  of 
an  inclination  to  Roman  views  had  been  promptly  and 
stoutly  met ;  nor  was  there  really  anything  but  the 
ignorance  or  ill-feeling  of  the  accusers  to  throw  doubt 
on  the  sincerity  of  these  disavowals.  The  deepest 
and  strongest  mind  in  the  movement  was  satisfied  ; 
and  his  steadiness  of  conviction  could  be  appealed  to 
if  his  followers  talked  wildly  and  rashly.  He  had 
kept  one  unwavering  path  ;  he  had  not  shrunk  from 
facing  with  fearless  honesty  the  real  living  array  of 
reasons  which  the  most  serious  Roman  advocates  could 
put  forward.  With  a  frankness  new  in  controversy, 
he  had  not  been  afraid  to  state  them  with  a  force 
which  few  of  his  opponents  could  have  put  forth. 
With  an  eye  ever  open  to  that  supreme  Judge  of 
all  our  controversies,  who  listens  to  them  on  His 
throne  on  high,  he  had  with  conscientious  fairness 
admitted  what  he  saw  to  be  good  and  just  on  the 
side  of  his  adversaries,  conceded  what  in  the  con- 
fused wrangle  of  conflicting  claims  he  judged  ought 
to  be  conceded.  But  after  all  admissions  and  all  con- 
cessions, the  comparative  strength  of  his  own  case 
appeared  all  the  more  undeniable.  He  had  stripped  it 
of  its  weaknesses,  its  incumbrances,  its  falsehoods  ;  and 
it  did  not  seem  the  weaker  for  being  presented  in  its 
real  aspect  and  on  its  real  grounds.  People  felt  that 
he  had  gone  to  the  bottom  of  the  question  as  no  one 
had  yet  dared  to  do.  He  was  yet  staunch  in  his 
convictions  ;  and  they  could  feel  secure. 

But  a  change  was  at  hand.      In  the  course  of  1839, 
the   little   cloud   showed   itself  in  the   outlook   of  the 


xii  CHANGES  195 

future  ;  the  little  rift  opened,  small  and  hardly  per- 
ceptible, which  was  to  widen  into  an  impassable  gulf. 
Anglicanism  started  with  undoubting  confidence  in  its 
own  foundations  and  its  own  position,  as  much  against 
Romanism  as  against  the  more  recent  forms  of  religion. 
In  the  consciousness  of  its  strength,  it  could  afford  to 
make  admissions  and  to  refrain  from  tempting  but 
unworthy  arguments  in  controversy  with  Rome  ;  indeed 
the  necessity  of  such  controversy  had  come  upon  it 
unexpectedly  and  by  surprise.  With  English  frankness, 
in  its  impatience  of  abuses  and  desire  for  improvement 
within,  it  had  dwelt  strongly  on  the  faults  and  short- 
comings of  the  English  Church  which  it  desired  to 
remedy ;  but  while  allowing  what  was  undeniably 
excellent  in  Rome,  it  had  been  equally  outspoken 
and  emphatic  in  condemnation  of  the  evils  of  Rome. 
What  is  there  to  wonder  at  in  such  a  position?  It  is 
the  position  of  every  honest  reforming  movement,  at 
least  in  England.  But  Anglican  self-reliance  was 
unshaken,  and  Anglican  hope  waxed  stronger  as  the 
years  went  on,  and  the  impression  made  by  Anglican 
teaching  became  wider  and  deeper.  Outside  attacks, 
outside  persecution,  could  now  do  little  harm  ;  the  time 
was  past  for  that.  What  might  have  happened,  had 
things  gone  on  as  they  began,  it  is  idle  to  inquire. 
But  at  the  moment  when  all  seemed  to  promise  fair, 
the  one  fatal  influence,  the  presence  of  internal  un- 
certainty and  doubt,  showed  itself.  The  body  of  men 
who  had  so  far  acted  together  began  to  show  a  double 
aspect.  While  one  portion  of  it  continued  on  the  old 
lines,  holding  the  old  ground,  defending  the  old  prin- 
ciples, and  attempting  to  apply  them  for  the  improve- 
ment of  the  practical  system  of  the  English  Church, 
another  portion  had  asked  the  question,  and  were 


196  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

pursuing  the  anxious  inquiry,  whether  the  English 
Church  was  a  true  Church  at  all,  a  true  portion  of  the 
one  uninterrupted  Catholic  Church  of  the  Redeemer. 
And  the  question  had  forced  itself  with  importunate 
persistence  on  the  leading  mind  of  the  movement. 
From  this  time  the  fate  of  Tractarianism,  as  a  party, 
was  decided. 

In  this    overthrow  of  confidence,  two  sets  of  in- 
fluences may  be  traced. 

i.  One,  which  came  from  above,  from  the  highest 
leading  authority  in  the  movement,  was  the  unsettle- 
ment  of  Mr.  Newman's  mind.  He  has  told  the  story, 
the  story  as  he  believed  of  his  enfranchisement  and 
deliverance  ;  and  he  has  told  the  story,  though  the  story 
of  a  deliverance,  with  so  keen  a  feeling  of  its  pathetic  and 
tragic  character, — as  it  is  indeed  the  most  tragic  story  of 
a  conversion  to  peace  and  hope  on  record, — that  it  will 
never  cease  to  be  read  where  the  English  language  is 
spoken.  Up  to  the  summer  of  1839,  his  view  of  the 
English  position  had  satisfied  him — satisfied  him,  that 
is,  as  a  tenable  one  in  the  anomalies  of  existing 
Christendom.  All  seemed  clear  and  hopeful,  and  the 
one  thing  to  be  thought  of  was  to  raise  the  English 
Church  to  the  height  of  its  own  standard.  But  in  the 
autumn  of  that  year  (1839),  as  he  has  told  us,  a 
change  took  place.  In  the  summer  of  1839,  he  had 
set  himself  to  study  the  history  of  the  Monophysite 
controversy.  "  I  have  no  reason,"  he  writes,  "  to 
suppose  that  the  thought  of  '  Rome  came  across  my 
mind  at  all.  ...  It  was  during  this  course  of  reading 
that  for  the  first  time  a  doubt  came  across  me  of  the 
tenableness  of  Anglicanism.  I  had  seen  the  shadow 
of  a  hand  on  the  wall.  He  who  has  seen  a  ghost 
cannot  be  as  if  he  had  never  seen  it.  The  heavens 


xii  CHANGES  197 

had  opened  and  closed  again."  To  less  imaginative 
and  slower  minds  this  seems  an  overwrought  descrip- 
tion of  a  phenomenon,  which  must  present  itself 
sometime  or  other  to  all  who  search  the  foundations 
of  conviction  ;  and  by  itself  he  was  for  the  time  proof 
against  its  force.  "  The  thought  for  the  moment  had 
been,  The  Church  of  Rome  will  be  found  right  after 
all ;  and  then  it  had  vanished.  My  old  convictions 
remained  as  before."  But  another  blow  came,  and 
then  another.  An  article  by  Dr.  Wiseman  on  the 
Donatists  greatly  disturbed  him.  The  words  of  St. 
Augustine  about  the  Donatists,  securus  judicat  orbis 
terrarum,  rung  continually  in  his  ears,  like  words  out  of 
the  sky.  He  found  the  threatenings  of  the  Monophy- 
site  controversy  renewed  in  the  Arian :  "  the  ghost 
had  come  a  second  time."  It  was  a  "most  uncom- 
fortable article,"  he  writes  in  his  letters  ;  "  the  first  real 
hit  from  Romanism  which  has  happened  to  me" ;  it  gave 
him,  as  he  says,  "a  stomach-ache."  But  he  still  held 
his  ground,  and  returned  his  answer  to  the  attack  in  an 
article  in  the  British  Critic,  on  the  "  Catholicity  of  the 
English  Church."  He  did  not  mean  to  take  the  attack 
for  more  than  it  was  worth,  an  able  bit  of  ex parte  state- 
ment. But  it  told  on  him,  as  nothing  had  yet  told  on 
him.  What  it  did,  was  to  "open  a  vista  which  was 
closed  before,  and  of  which  he  could  not  see  the  end"  ; 
"  we  are  not  at  the  bottom  of  things,"  was  the  sting 
it  left  behind.  From  this  time,  the  hope  and  exulta- 
tion with  which,  in  spite  of  checks  and  misgivings,  he 
had  watched  the  movement,  gave  way  to  uneasiness 
and  distress.  A  new  struggle  was  beginning,  a  long 
struggle  with  himself,  a  long  struggle  between  rival 
claims  which  would  not  be  denied,  each  equally  im- 
perious, and  involving  fatal  consequences  if  by  mistake 


198  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

the  wrong  one  was  admitted.  And  it  was  not  only 
the  effect  of  these  thoughts  on  his  own  mind  which 
filled  him  with  grief  and  trouble.  He  always  thought 
much  for  others  ;  and  now  there  was  the  misery  of 
perhaps  unsettling  others — others  who  had  trusted 
him  with  their  very  souls — others,  to  whom  it  was 
impossible  to  explain  the  conflicts  which  were  passing 
in  his  own  mind.  It  was  so  bitter  to  unsettle  their 
hope  and  confidence.  All  through  this  time,  more 
trying  than  his  own  difficulties,  were  the  perplexities 
and  sorrows  which  he  foresaw  for  those  whom  he 
loved.  Very  illogical  and  inconsecutive,  doubtless ; 
if  only  he  had  had  the  hard  heart  of  a  proselytiser,  he 
would  have  seen  that  it  was  his  duty  to  undermine 
and  shatter  their  old  convictions.  But  he  cared  more 
for  the  tempers  and  beliefs  in  which  he  was  at  one 
with  his  Anglican  friends,  than  for  those  in  which  they 
could  not  follow  him.  But  the  struggle  came  on 
gradually.  What  he  feared  at  first  was  not  the 
triumph  of  Rome,  but  the  break-up  of  the  English 
Church  ;  the  apparent  probability  of  a  great  schism  in  it. 
"  I  fear  I  see  more  clearly  that  we  are  working  up  to 
a  schism  in  the  English  Church,  that  is,  a  split 
between  Peculiars  and  Apostolicals.  ...  I  never 
can  be  surprised  at  individuals  going  off  to  Rome,  but 
that  is  not  my  chief  fear,  but  a  schism  ;  that  is,  those 
two  parties,  which  have  hitherto  got  on  together  as 
they  could,  from  the  times  of  Puritanism  downwards, 
gathering  up  into  clear,  tangible,  and  direct  forces,  and 
colliding.  Our  Church  is  not  at  one  with  itself,  there 
is  no  denying  it."  That  was  at  first  the  disaster 
before  him.  His  thought  for  himself  began  to  turn, 
not  to  Rome,  but  to  a  new  life  without  office  and 
authority,  but  still  within  the  English  Church.  "  You 


xii  CHANGES  199 

see,  if  things  come  to  the  worst,  I  should  turn  brother 
of  charity  in  London."  And  he  began  to  prepare  for 
a  move  from  Oxford,  from  St.  Mary's,  from  his  fellow- 
ship. He  bought  land  at  Littlemore,  and  began  to 
plant.  He  asks  his  brother-in-law  for  plans  for 
building  what  he  calls  a  ^ovrj.  He  looks  forward  to  its 
becoming  a  sort  of  Monastic  school,  but  still  connected 
with  the  University. 

In  Mr.  Newman's  view  of  the  debate  between 
England  and  Rome,  he  had  all  along  dwelt  on  two 
broad  features,  Apostolicity  and  Catholicity,  likeness 
to  the  Apostolic  teaching,  and  likeness  to  the  un- 
interrupted unity  and  extent  of  the  undivided  Church  ; 
and  of  those  two  features  he  found  the  first  signally 
wanting  in  Rome,  and  the  second  signally  wanting  in 
England.  When  he  began  to  distrust  his  own  reason- 
ings, still  the  disturbing  and  repelling  element  in 
Rome  was  the  alleged  defect  of  Apostolicity,  the 
contrast  between  primitive  and  Roman  religion ;  while 
the  attractive  one  was  the  apparent  widely  extended 
Catholicity  in  all  lands,  East  and  West,  continents 
and  isles,  of  the  world-wide  spiritual  empire  of  the 
Pope.  It  is  these  two  great  points  which  may  be 
traced  in  their  action  on  his  mind  at  this  crisis.  The 
contrast  between  early  and  Roman  doctrine  and 
practice,  in  a  variety  of  ways,  some  of  them  most 
grave  and  important,  was  long  a  great  difficulty  in  the 
way  of  attempting  to  identify  the  Roman  Church, 
absolutely  and  exclusively,  with  the  Primitive  Church. 
The  study  of  antiquity  indisposed  him,  indeed,  more 
and  more  to  the  existing  system  of  the  English 
Church  ;  its  claims  to  model  itself  on  the  purity  and 
simplicity  of  the  Early  Church  seemed  to  him,  in  the 
light  of  its  documents,  and  still  more  of  the  facts  of 


200  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

history  and  life,  more  and  more  questionable.  But 
modern  Rome  was  just  as  distant  from  the  Early 
Church  though  it  preserved  many  ancient  features, 
lost  or  unvalued  by  England.  Still,  Rome  was  not 
the  same  thing  as  the  Early  Church  ;  and  Mr.  New- 
man ultimately  sought  a  way  out  of  his  difficulty — and 
indeed  there  was  no  other — in  the  famous  doctrine  of 
Development.  But  when  the  difficulty  about  Aposto- 
licity  was  thus  provided  for,  then  the  force  of  the 
great  vision  of  the  Catholic  Church  came  upon  him, 
unchecked  and  irresistible.  That  was  a  thing  present, 
visible,  undeniable  as  a  fact  of  nature ;  that  was  a 
thing  at  once  old  and  new  ;  it  belonged  as  truly,  as 
manifestly,  to  the  recent  and  modern  world  of 
democracy  and  science,  as  it  did  to  the  Middle  Ages 
and  the  Fathers,  to  the  world  of  Gregory  and  Innocent, 
to  the  world  of  Athanasius  and  Augustine.  The 
majesty,  the  vastness  of  an  imperial  polity,  outlasting 
all  states  and  kingdoms,  all  social  changes  and  political 
revolutions,  answered  at  once  to  the  promises  of  the 
prophecies,  and  to  the  antecedent  idea  of  the  universal 
kingdom  of  God.  Before  this  great  idea,  embodied 
in  concrete  form,  and  not  a  paper  doctrine,  partial 
scandals  and  abuses  seemed  to  sink  into  insignificance. 
Objections  seemed  petty  and  ignoble ;  the  pretence  of 
rival  systems  impertinent  and  absurd.  He  resented 
almost  with  impatience  anything  in  the  way  of  theory 
or  explanation  which  seemed  to  him  narrow,  technical, 
dialectical.  He  would  look  at  nothing  but  what  had 
on  it  the  mark  of  greatness  and  largeness  which  be- 
fitted the  awful  subject,  and  was  worthy  of  arresting 
the  eye  and  attention  of  an  ecclesiastical  statesman,  alive 
to  mighty  interests,  compared  to  which  even  the  most 
serious  human  affairs  were  dwarfed  and  obscured. 


xii  CHANGES  201 

But  all  this  was  gradual  in  coming.  His  recogni- 
tion of  the  claims  of  the  English  Church,  faulty  and 
imperfect  as  he  thought  it,  did  not  give  way  suddenly 
and  at  once.  It  survived  the  rude  shock  of  1839. 
From  first  to  almost  the  last  she  was  owned  as  his 
"mother" — owned  in  passionate  accents  of  disappoint- 
ment and  despair  as  a  Church  which  knew  not  how 
to  use  its  gifts ;  yet  still,  even  though  life  seemed 
failing  her,  and  her  power  of  teaching  and  ruling 
seemed  paralysed,  his  mother ;  and  as  long  as  there 
seemed  to  him  a  prospect  of  restoration  to  health,  it 
was  his  duty  to  stay  by  her.1  This  was  his  first  atti- 
tude for  three  or  four  years  after  1839.  He  could 
not  speak  of  her  with  the  enthusiasm  and  triumph  of 
the  first  years  of  the  movement.  When  he  fought 
her  battles,  it  was  with  the  sense  that  her  imper- 
fections made  his  task  the  harder.  Still  he  clung  to 
the  belief  that  she  held  a  higher  standard  than  she 
had  yet  acted  up  to,  and  discouraged  and  perplexed 
he  yet  maintained  her  cause.  But  now  two  things 
happened.  The  Roman  claims,  as  was  natural  when 
always  before  him,  seemed  to  him  more  and  more 
indisputable.  And  in  England  his  interpretation  of 
Anglican  theology  seemed  to  be  more  and  more 
contradicted,  disavowed,  condemned,  by  all  that  spoke 
with  any  authority  in  the  Church.  The  University 
was  not  an  ecclesiastical  body,  yet  it  had  practically 
much  weight  in  matters  of  theology  ;  it  informally, 
but  effectually,  declared  against  him.  The  Bishops, 
one  by  one,  of  course  only  spoke  as  individuals ;  but 
they  were  the  official  spokesmen  of  the  Church,  and 
their  consent,  though  not  the  act  of  a  Synod,  was 
weighty — they  too  had  declared  against  him.  And. 

1  See  Sermons  on  Siibjects  of  the  Day,  1843. 


202  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

finally  that  vague  but  powerful  voice  of  public  opinion, 
which  claims  to  represent  at  once  the  cool  judg- 
ment of  the  unbiassed,  and  the  passion  of  the  zealous 
— it  too  declared  against  him.  Could  he  claim  to 
understand  the  mind  of  the  Church  better  than  its  own 
organs  ? 

Then  at  length  a  change  came ;  and  it  was  marked 
outwardly  by  a  curious  retractation  of  his  severe 
language  about  Rome,  published  in  a  paper  called  the 
Conservative  Journal,  in  January  1843;  and  more 
distinctly,  by  his  resignation  of  St.  Mary's  in  Septem- 
ber 1843,  a  step  contemplated  for  some  time,  and  by 
his  announcement  that  he  was  preparing  to  resign  his 
fellowship.  From  this  time  he  felt  that  he  could  no 
longer  hold  office,  or  be  a  champion  of  the  English 
Church ;  from  this  time,  it  was  only  a  matter  of 
waiting,  waiting  to  make  quite  certain  that  he  was 
right  and  was  under  no  delusion,  when  he  should  leave 
her  for  the  Roman  Communion.  And  to  his  intimate 
friends,  to  his  sisters,  he  gave  notice  that  this  was 
now  impending.  To  the  world  outside,  all  that  was 
known  was  that  he  was  much  unsettled  and  distressed 
by  difficulties. 

It  may  be  asked  why  this  change  was  not  at  this 
time  communicated,  not  to  a  few  intimates,  but  to  the 
world  ?  Why  did  he  not  at  this  time  hoist  his  quaran- 
tine flag  and  warn  every  one  that  he  was  dangerous  to 
come  near  ?  So  keen  a  mind  must,  it  was  said,  have 
by  this  time  foreseen  how  things  would  end  ;  he  ought 
to  have  given  earlier  notice.  His  answer  was  that  he 
was  sincerely  desirous  of  avoiding,  as  far  as  possible, 
what  might  prejudice  the  Church  in  which  he  had 
ministered,  even  at  the  moment  of  leaving  her.  He 
saw  his  own  way  becoming  clearer  and  clearer ;  but 


xii  CHANGES  203 

he  saw  it  for  himself  alone.  He  was  not  one  of  those 
who  force  the  convictions  of  others  ;  he  was  not  one  of 
those  who  think  it  a  great  thing  to  be  followed  in  a 
serious  change  by  a  crowd  of  disciples.  Whatever 
might  be  at  the  end,  it  was  now  an  agonising  wrench 
to  part  from  the  English  body,  to  part  from  the 
numbers  of  friends  whose  loyalty  was  immovable,  to 
part  from  numbers  who  had  trusted  and  learned  from 
him.  Of  course,  if  he  was  in  the  right  way,  he  could 
wish  them  nothing  better  than  that  they  should  follow 
him.  But  they  were  in  God's  hands  ;  it  was  not  his 
business  to  unsettle  them  ;  it  was  not  his  business  to 
ensnare  and  coerce  their  faith.  And  so  he  tried  for  this 
time  to  steer  his  course  alone.  He  wished  to  avoid 
observation.  He  was  silent  on  all  that  went  on  round 
him,  exciting  as  some  of  the  incidents  were.  He 
would  not  be  hurried  ;  he  would  give  himself  full  time ; 
he  would  do  what  he  could  to  make  sure  that  he  was 
not  acting  under  the  influence  of  a  delusion. 

The  final  result  of  all  this  was  long  in  coming ; 
there  was,  we  know,  a  bitter  agony  of  five  years,  a 
prolonged  and  obstinate  and  cruel  struggle  between 
the  deepest  affections  and  ever-growing  convictions. 
But  this  struggle,  as  has  been  said,  did  not  begin  with 
the  conviction  in  which  it  ended.  It  began  and  long 
continued  with  the  belief  that  though  England  was 
wrong,  Rome  was  not  right ;  that  though  the  Roman 
argument  seemed  more  and  more  unanswerable,  there 
were  insuperable  difficulties  of  certain  fact  which  made 
the  Roman  conclusion  incredible  ;  that  there  was  so 
much  good  and  truth  in  England,  with  all  its  defects 
and  faults,  which  was  unaccountable  and  unintelligible 
on  the  Roman  hypothesis  ;  that  the  real  upshot  was 
that  the  whole  state  of  things  in  Christendom  was 


204  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

abnormal ;  that  to  English  Churchmen  the  English 
Church  had  immediate  and  direct  claims  which  nothing 
but  the  most  irresistible  counter-claims  could  overcome 
or  neutralise — the  claims  of  a  shipwrecked  body  cut 
off  from  country  and  home,  yet  as  a  shipwrecked  body 
still  organised,  and  with  much  saved  from  the  wreck, 
and  not  to  be  deserted,  as  long  as  it  held  together,  in 
an  uncertain  attempt  to  rejoin  its  lost  unity.  Resig- 
nation, retirement,  silence,  lay  communion,  the  hope 
of  ultimate,  though  perhaps  long-deferred  reunion — 
these  were  his  first  thoughts.  Misgivings  could  not 
be  helped,  would  not  be  denied,  but  need  not  be 
paraded,  were  to  be  kept  at  arm's-length  as  long  as 
possible.  This  is  the  picture  presented  in  the  auto- 
biography of  these  painful  and  dreary  years ;  and 
there  is  every  evidence  that  it  is  a  faithful  one.  It  is 
conceivable,  though  not  very  probable,  that  such  a 
course  might  go  on  indefinitely.  It  is  conceivable 
that  under  different  circumstances  he  might,  like 
other  perplexed  and  doubting  seekers  after  truth,  have 
worked  round  through  doubt  and  perplexity  to  his 
first  conviction.  But  the  actual  result,  as  it  came,  was 
natural  enough  ;  and  it  was  accelerated  by  provocation, 
by  opponents  without,  and  by  the  pressure  of  advanced 
and  impatient  followers  and  disciples  in  the  party 
itself. 

2.  This  last  was  the  second  of  the  two  influences 
spoken  of  above.  It  worked  from  below,  as  the  first 
worked  from  above. 

Discussions  and  agitations,  such  as  accompanied 
the  movement,  however  much  under  the  control  of  the 
moral  and  intellectual  ascendancy  of  the  leaders,  could 
not  of  course  be  guaranteed  from  escaping  from  that 
control.  And  as  the  time  went  on,  men  joined  the 


CHANGES  205 


movement  who  had  but  qualified  sympathy  with  that 
passionate  love  and  zeal  for  the  actual  English  Church, 
that  acquaintance  with  its  historical  theology,  and  that 
temper  of  discipline,  sobriety,  and  self-distrust,  which 
marked  its  first  representatives.  These  younger  dis- 
ciples shared  in  the  growing  excitement  of  the  society 
round  them.  They  were  attracted  by  visible  height 
of  character,  and  brilliant  intellectual  power.  They 
were  alive  to  vast  and  original  prospects,  opening  a 
new  world  which  should  be  a  contrast  to  the  worn-out 
interest  of  the  old.  Some  of  these  were  men  of  wide 
and  abstruse  learning ;  quaint  and  eccentric  scholars 
both  in  habit  and  look,  students  of  the  ancient  type, 
who  even  fifty  years  ago  seemed  out  of  date  to  their 
generation.  Some  were  men  of  considerable  force  of 
mind,  destined  afterwards  to  leave  a  mark  on  their  age 
as  thinkers  and  writers.  To  the  former  class  belonged 
Charles  Seager,  and  John  Brande  Morris,  of  Exeter 
College,  both  learned  Orientalists,  steeped  in  recondite 
knowledge  of  all  kinds  ;  men  who  had  worked  their 
way  to  knowledge  through  hardship  and  grinding 
labour,  and  not  to  be  outdone  in  Germany  itself  for 
devouring  love  of  learning  and  a  scholar's  plainness 
of  life.  In  the  other  class  may  be  mentioned  Frederic 
Faber,  J.  D.  Dalgairns,  and  W.  G.  Ward,  men  who 
have  all  since  risen  to  eminence  in  their  different 
spheres.  Faber  was  a  man  with  a  high  gift  of  imagin- 
ation, remarkable  powers  of  assimilating  knowledge, 
and  a  great  richness  and  novelty  and  elegance  of 
thought,  which  with  much  melody  of  voice  made  him 
ultimately  a  very  attractive  preacher.  If  the  promise 
of  his  powers  has  not  been  adequately  fulfilled,  it  is 
partly  to  be  traced  to  a  want  of  severity  of  taste  and 
self-restraint,  but  his  name  will  live  in  some  of  his 


206  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

hymns,  and  in  some  very  beautiful  portions  of  his 
devotional  writings.  Dalgairns's  mind  was  of  a  dif- 
ferent order.  "  That  man  has  an  eye  for  theology," 
was  the  remark  of  a  competent  judge  on  some  early 
paper  of  Dalgairns's  which  came  before  him.  He  had 
something  of  the  Frenchman  about  him.  There  was 
in  him,  in  his  Oxford  days,  a  bright  and  frank  brisk- 
ness, a  mixture  of  modesty  and  arch  daring,  which 
gave  him  an  almost  boyish  appearance ;  but  beneath 
this  boyish  appearance  there  was  a  subtle  and  powerful 
intellect,  alive  to  the  problems  of  religious  philosophy, 
and  impatient  of  any  but  the  most  thorough  solutions 
of  them  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  religious  affec- 
tions were  part  of  his  nature,  and  mind  and  will  and 
heart  yielded  an  unreserved  and  absolute  obedience  to 
the  leading  and  guidance  of  faith.  In  his  later  days, 
with  his  mind  at  ease,  Father  Dalgairns  threw  himself 
into  the  great  battle  with  unbelief;  and  few  men  have 
commanded  more  the  respect  of  opponents  not  much 
given  to  think  well  of  the  arguments  for  religion,  by 
the  freshness  and  the  solidity  of  his  reasoning.  At 
this  time,  enthusiastic  in  temper,  and  acute  and  exact- 
ing as  a  thinker,  he  found  the  Church  movement  just, 
as  it  were,  on  the  turn  of  the  wave.  He  was  attracted 
to  it  at  first  by  its  reaction  against  what  was  unreal 
and  shallow,  by  its  affinities  with  what  was  deep  in 
idea  and  earnest  in  life  ;  then,  and  finally,  he  was 
repelled  from  it,  by  its  want  of  completeness,  by  its 
English  acquiescence  in  compromise,  by  its  hesitations 
and  clinging  to  insular  associations  and  sympathies, 
which  had  little  interest  for  him. 

Another  person,  who  was  at  this  time  even  more 
prominent  in  the  advanced  portion  of  the  movement 
party,  and  whose  action  had  more  decisive  influence 


xii  CHANGES  207 

on  its  course,  was  Mr.  W.  G.  Ward,  Fellow  of  Balliol. 
Mr.  Ward,  who  was  first  at  Christ  Church,  had  dis- 
tinguished himself  greatly  at  the  Oxford  Union  as  a 
vigorous  speaker,  at  first  on  the  Tory  side  ;  he  came 
afterwards  under  the  influence  of  Arthur  Stanley,  then 
fresh  from  Rugby,  and  naturally  learned  to  admire  Dr. 
Arnold  ;  but  Dr.  Arnold's  religious  doctrines  did  not 
satisfy  him ;  the  movement,  with  its  boldness  and 
originality  of  idea  and  ethical  character,  had  laid 
strong  hold  on  him,  and  he  passed  into  one  of  the 
most  thoroughgoing  adherents  of  Mr.  Newman. 
There  was  something  to  smile  at  in  his  person,  and 
in  some  of  his  ways — his  unbusiness-like  habits,  his 
joyousness  of  manner,  his  racy  stories  ;  but  few  more 
powerful  intellects  passed  through  Oxford  in  his  time, 
and  he  has  justified  his  University  reputation  by  his 
distinction  since,  both  as  a  Roman  Catholic  theologian 
and  professor,  and  as  a  profound  metaphysical  thinker, 
the  equal  antagonist  on  their  own  ground  of  J.  Stuart 
Mill  and  Herbert  Spencer.  But  his  intellect  at  that 
time  was  as  remarkable  for  its  defects  as  for  its 
powers.  He  used  to  divide  his  friends,  and  thinking 
people  in  general,  into  those  who  had  facts  and  did 
not  know  what  to  do  with  them,  and  those  who  had  in 
perfection  the  logical  faculties,  but  wanted  the  facts  to 
reason  upon.  He  belonged  himself  to  the  latter  class. 
He  had,  not  unnaturally,  boundless  confidence  in  his 
argumentative  powers ;  they  were  subtle,  piercing, 
nimble,  never  at  a  loss,  and  they  included  a  power  of 
exposition  which,  if  it  was  not  always  succinct  and 
lively,  was  always  weighty  and  impressive.  Premises 
in  his  hands  were  not  long  in  bringing  forth  their 
conclusions  ;  and  if  abstractions  always  corresponded 
exactly  to  their  concrete  embodiments,  and  ideals  were 


2o8  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

fulfilled  in  realities,  no  one  could  point  out  more  per- 
spicuously and  decisively  the  practical  judgments  on 
them  which  reason  must  sanction.  But  that  know- 
ledge of  things  and  of  men  which  mere  power  of 
reasoning  will  not  give  was  not  one  of  his  special 
endowments.  The  study  of  facts,  often  in  their  com- 
plicated and  perplexing  reality,  was  not  to  his  taste. 
He  was  apt  to  accept  them  on  what  he  considered 
adequate  authority,  and  his  argumentation,  formidable 
as  it  always  was,  recalled,  even  when  most  unanswer- 
able at  the  moment,  the  application  of  pure  mathematics 
without  allowance  for  the  actual  forces,  often  difficult 
to  ascertain  except  by  experiment,  which  would  have 
to  be  taken  account  of  in  practice. 

The  tendency  of  this  section  of  able  men  was 
unquestionably  Romewards,  almost  from  the  beginning 
of  their  connexion  with  the  movement.  Both  the 
theory  and  the  actual  system  of  Rome,  so  far  as  they 
understood  it,  had  attractions  for  them  which  nothing 
else  had.  But  with  whatever  perplexity  and  perhaps 
impatience,  Mr.  Newman's  power  held  them  back. 
He  kept  before  their  minds  continually  those  difficul- 
ties of  fact  which  stood  in  the  way  of  their  absolute 
and  peremptory  conclusions,  and  of  which  they  were 
not  much  inclined  to  take  account.  He  insisted 
on  those  features,  neither  few  nor  unimportant  nor 
hard  to  see,  which  proved  the  continuity  of  the  Eng- 
lish Church  with  the  Church  Universal.  Sharing  their 
sense  of  anomaly  in  the  Anglican  theory  and  position, 
he  pointed  out  with  his  own  force  and  insight  that 
anomaly  was  not  in  England  only,  but  everywhere. 
There  was  much  to  regret,  there  was  much  to  im- 
prove, there  were  many  unwelcome  and  dangerous 
truths,  invidiosi  veri,  to  be  told  and  defended  at  any 


xii  CHANGES  209 

cost.      But  patience,  as  well  as  honesty  and  courage, 
was  a  Christian  virtue ;  and   they  who   had   received 
their  Christianity  at  the  hands  of  the  English  Church 
had  duties  towards  it  from  which  neither  dissatisfaction 
nor  the  idea  of  something  better  could  absolve  them. 
Spartam  nactus  es,  hanc  exorna  is  the  motto  for  every 
one    whose    lot    is    cast   in   any    portion    of    Christ's 
Church.      And  as  long  as  he  could  speak  with   this 
conviction,  the    strongest   of  them    could    not    break 
away  from  his  restraint.      It  was  when  the  tremendous 
question  took  shape,   Is  the    English   Church   a  true 
Church,  a  real  part  of  the  Church  Catholic  ? — when  the 
question  became  to  his  mind  more  and  more  doubtful, 
at  length  desperate — that  they,  of  course,  became  more 
difficult  to  satisfy,  more  confident  in  their  own  allega- 
tions,  more    unchecked   in   their  sympathies,  and,    in 
consequence,  in  their  dislikes.     And  in  the  continued 
effort — for  it  did  continue — to  make  them  pause  and 
wait  and  hope,  they  reacted  on  him ;  they  asked  him 
questions  which    he   found   it  hard   to   answer ;    they 
pressed  him  with  inferences  which  he  might  put  by, 
but  of  which  he  felt  the  sting ;  they  forced  on  him  all 
the  indications,  of  which  every  day  brought  its  contri- 
bution,  that  the  actual  living  system  of  the  English 
Church  was  against  what  he  had  taught  to  be  Catholic, 
that  its  energetic  temper  and  spirit  condemned  and 
rejected    him.      What  was  it  that  private   men  were 
staunch  and   undismayed  ?     What  was  it  that  month 
by  month  all  over  England    hearts  and  minds  were 
attracted  to   his  side,  felt  the  spell   of  his  teaching, 
gave  him  their  confidence  ?     Suspicion  and  disappro- 
bation, which  had  only  too  much  to  ground  itself  upon, 
had  taken  possession  of  the  high  places  of  the  Church. 
Authority  in  all  its  shapes  had  pronounced  as  decisively 


210  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

as  his  opponents  could  wish  ;  as  decisively  as  they  too 
could  wish,  who  desired  no  longer  a  barrier  between 
themselves  and  Rome. 

Thus  a  great  and  momentous  change  had  come 
over  the  movement,  over  its  action  and  prospects. 
It  had  started  in  a  heroic  effort  to  save  the  English 
Church.  The  claims,  the  blessings,  the  divinity  of 
the  English  Church,  as  a  true  branch  of  Catholic 
Christendom,  had  been  assumed  as  the  foundation  of 
all  that  was  felt  and  said  and  attempted.  The  English 
Church  was  the  one  object  to  which  English  Chris- 
tians were  called  upon  to  turn  their  thoughts.  Its 
spirit  animated  the  Christian  Year,  and  the  teaching 
of  those  whom  the  Christian  Year  represented.  Its 
interests  were  what  called  forth  the  zeal  and  the  indig- 
nation recorded  in  Froude's  Remains.  No  one  seri- 
ously thought  of  Rome,  except  as  a  hopelessly  corrupt 
system,  though  it  had  some  good  and  Catholic  things, 
which  it  was  Christian  and  honest  to  recognise.  The 
movement  of  1833  started  out  of  the  Anti- Roman 
feelings  of  the  Emancipation  time.  It  was  Anti- 
Roman  as  much  as  it  was  Anti-Sectarian  and  Anti- 
Erastian.  It  was  to  avert  the  danger  of  people 
becoming  Romanists  from  ignorance  of  Church  prin- 
ciples. This  was  all  changed  in  one  important  sec- 
tion of  the  party.  The  fundamental  conceptions  and 
assumptions  were  reversed.  It  was  not  the  Roman 
Church,  but  the  English  Church,  which  was  put  on 
its  trial  ;  it  was  not  the  Roman  Church,  but  the 
English,  which  was  to  be,  if  possible,  apologised  for, 
perhaps  borne  with  for  a  time,  but  which  was  to  be 
regarded  as  deeply  fallen,  holding  an  untenable  posi- 
tion, and  incomparably,  unpardonably,  below  both  the 
standard  and  the  practical  system  of  the  Roman  Church. 


xii  CHANGES  211 

From  this  point  of  view  the  object  of  the  movement 
was  no  longer  to  elevate  and  improve  an  independent 
English  Church,  but  to  approximate  it  as  far  as  possible 
to  what  was  assumed  to  be  undeniable — the  perfect 
Catholicity  of  Rome.  More  almost  than  ideas  and 
assumptions,  the  tone  of  feeling  changed.  It  had 
been,  towards  the  English  Church,  affectionate,  enthu- 
siastic, reverential,  hopeful.  It  became  contemptuous, 
critical,  intolerant,  hostile  with  the  hostility  not  merely 
of  alienation  but  disgust.  This  was  not  of  course 
the  work  of  a  moment,  but  it  was  of  very  rapid 
growth.  "  How  I  hate  these  Anglicans ! "  was  the 
expression  of  one  of  the  younger  men  of  this  section, 
an  intemperate  and  insolent  specimen  of  it.  It  did 
not  represent  the  tone  or  the  language  of  the  leader 
to  whom  the  advanced  section  deferred,  vexed  as  he 
often  was  with  the  course  of  his  own  thoughts,  and 
irritated  and  impatient  at  the  course  of  things  without. 
But  it  expressed  but  too  truly  the  difference  between 
1833  and  1840. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT 

WHILE  the  movement  was  making  itself  felt  as  a  moral 
force,  without  a  parallel  in  Oxford  for  more  than  two 
centuries,  and  was  impressing  deeply  and  permanently 
some  of  the  most  promising  men  in  the  rising  genera- 
tion in  the  University,  what  was  the  attitude  of  the 
University  authorities  ?  What  was  the  attitude  of  the 
Bishops  ? 

At  Oxford  it  was  that  of  contemptuous  indifference, 
passing  into  helpless  and  passionate  hostility.  There 
is  no  sadder  passage  to  be  found  in  the  history  of 
Oxford  than  the  behaviour  and  policy  of  the  heads 
of  this  great  Christian  University  towards  the  reli- 
gious movement  which  was  stirring  the  interest,  the 
hopes,  the  fears  of  Oxford.  The  movement  was,  for  its 
first  years  at  least,  a  loyal  and  earnest  effort  to  serve 
the  cause  of  the  Church.  Its  objects  were  clear  and 
reasonable ;  it  aimed  at  creating  a  sincere  and  intelli- 
gent zeal  for  the  Church,  and  at  making  the  Church 
itself  worthy  of  the  great  position  which  her  friends 
claimed  for  her.  Its  leaders  were  men  well  known  in 
the  University,  in  the  first  rank  in  point  of  ability 
and  character ;  men  of  learning,  who  knew  what  they 
were  talking  about ;  men  of  religious  and  pure,  if  also 


CH.  xin     THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT        213 

severe  lives.  They  were  not  men  merely  of  specula- 
tion and  criticism,  but  men  ready  to  forego  anything, 
to  devote  everything  for  the  practical  work  of  elevating 
religious  thought  and  life.  All  this  did  not  necessarily 
make  their  purposes  and  attempts  wise  and  good  ;  but 
it  did  entitle  them  to  respectful  attention.  If  they 
spoke  language  new  to  the  popular  mind  or  the 
"  religious  world,"  it  was  not  new — at  least  it  ought 
not  to  have  been  new — to  orthodox  Churchmen,  with 
opportunities  of  study  and  acquainted  with  our  best 
divinity.  If  their  temper  was  eager  and  enthusiastic, 
they  alleged  the  presence  of  a  great  and  perilous  crisis. 
Their  appeal  was  mainly  not  to  the  general  public,  but 
to  the  sober  and  the  learned ;  to  those  to  whom  was 
entrusted  the  formation  of  faith  and  character  in  the 
future  clergy  of  the  Church  ;  to  those  who  were  respon- 
sible for  the  discipline  and  moral  tone  of  the  first 
University  of  Christendom,  and  who  held  their  con- 
spicuous position  on  the  understanding  of  that  respon- 
sibility. It  behoved  the  heads  of  the  University  to  be 
cautious,  even  to  be  suspicious  ;  movements  might  be 
hollow  or  dangerous  things.  But  it  behoved  them  also 
to  become  acquainted  with  so  striking  a  phenomenon 
as  this  ;  to  judge  it  by  what  it  appealed  to — the  learn- 
ing of  English  divines,  the  standard  of  a  high  and 
generous  moral  rule  ;  to  recognise  its  aims  at  least,  with 
equity  and  sympathy,  if  some  of  its  methods  and  argu- 
ments seemed  questionable.  The  men  of  the  move- 
ment were  not  mere  hostile  innovators ;  they  were 
fighting  for  what  the  University  and  its  chiefs  held 
dear  and  sacred,  the  privileges  and  safety  of  the  Church. 
It  was  the  natural  part  of  the  heads  of  the  University 
to  act  as  moderators  ;  at  any  rate,  to  have  shown,  with 
whatever  reserve,  that  they  appreciated  what  they 


214  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

needed  time  to  judge  of.  But  while  on  the  one  side 
there  was  burning  and  devouring  earnestness,  and  that 
power  of  conviction  which  doubles  the  strength  of  the 
strong,  there  was  on  the  other  a  serene  ignoring  of  all 
that  was  going  on,  worthy  of  a  set  of  dignified  French 
abbts  on  the  eve  of  the  Revolution.  This  sublime  or 
imbecile  security  was  occasionally  interrupted  by  bursts 
of  irritation  at  some  fresh  piece  of  Tractarian  oddness 
or  audacity,  or  at  some  strange  story  which  made  its 
way  from  the  gossip  of  common-rooms  to  the  society 
of  the  Heads  of  Houses.  And  there  was  always 
ready  a  stick  to  beat  the  offenders ;  everything 
could  be  called  Popish.  But  for  the  most  part  they 
looked  on,  with  smiles,  with  jokes,  sometimes  with 
scolding.1  Thus  the  men  who  by  their  place  ought  to 
have  been  able  to  gauge  and  control  the  movement, 
who  might  have  been  expected  to  meet  half-way  a 
serious  attempt  to  brace  up  the  religious  and  moral 
tone  of  the  place,  so  incalculably  important  in  days 


1  Fifty  years   ago  there  was   much  Of  good  or  ill  report ;  or  those  with 
greater  contrast  than  now  between  old  whom 

and  young.     There  was  more  outward  By  frame  of  Academic  discipline 

respect  for  the  authorities,  and  among  We    were    perforce    connected,    men 
the  younger  men,  graduates  and  under-  whose  sway 

graduates,  more  inward  amusement  at  And  known  authority  of  office  served 

foibles  and  eccentricities.     There  still  To  set  our  minds  on  edge,  and  did  no 
lingered  the  survivals  of  a  more  old-  more. 

fashioned   type  of  University  life  and  Nor  wanted  we  rich   pastime  of  this 
character,  which,  quite  apart  from  the  kind, 

movements  of  religious  opinion,  pro-  Found  everywhere,  but  chiefly  in   the 
voked  those  veai'tei^uaTa  ISidir^v  ds  TOI)S  ring 

dpxovras,1  impertinences  of  irresponsible  Of  the  grave  Elders,   men  unsecured, 
•uniors  towards  superiors,  which  Words-  grotesque 

worth,  speaking  of  a  yet  earlier  time,  In   character,    tricked   out   like    aged 
remembered  at  Cambridge —  trees 

"In  serious  mood, but  oftener,  I  confess,  Which  through  the  lapse  of  their  in- 
With  playful  zest  of  fancy,  did  we  note  firmity 

(How  could  we  less?)  the  manners  and  Give  ready  place  to  any  random  seed 

the  ways  That  chooses  to  be  reared  upon  their 
Of  those  who  lived  distinguished  by  the  trunks." 

badge  Prelude,  bk.  iii. 

1  Plat.  R.  P.  iii.  390. 


xin          THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT          215 

confessed  to  be  anxious  ones,  simply  set  their  faces 
steadily  to  discountenance  and  discredit  it.  They  were 
good  and  respectable  men,  living  comfortably  in  a  cer- 
tain state  and  ease.  Their  lives  were  mostly  simple 
compared  with  the  standard  of  the  outer  world,  though 
Fellows  of  Colleges  thought  them  luxurious.  But  they 
were  blind  and  dull  as  tea-table  gossips  as  to  what  was 
the  meaning  of  the  movement,  as  to  what  might  come 
of  it,  as  to  what  use  might  be  made  of  it  by  wise  and 
just  and  generous  recognition,  and,  if  need  be,  by  wise 
and  just  criticism  and  repression.  There  were  points  of 
danger  in  it ;  but  they  could  only  see  what  seemed  to 
be  dangerous,  whether  it  was  so  or  not ;  and  they  multi- 
plied these  points  of  danger  by  all  that  was  good  and 
hopeful  in  it.  It  perplexed  and  annoyed  them  ;  they 
had  not  imagination  nor  moral  elevation  to  take  in  what 
it  aimed  at ;  they  were  content  with  the  routine  which 
they  had  inherited ;  and,  so  that  men  read  for  honours 
and  took  first  classes,  it  did  not  seem  to  them  strange 
or  a  profanation  that  a  whole  mixed  crowd  of  under- 
graduates should  be  expected  to  go  on  a  certain 
Sunday  in  term,  willing  or  unwilling,  fit  or  unfit,  to  the 
Sacrament,  and  be  fined  if  they  did  not  appear. 
Doubtless  we  are  all  of  us  too  prone  to  be  content  with 
the  customary,  and  to  be  prejudiced  against  the  novel, 
nor  is  this  condition  of  things  without  advantage.  But 
we  must  bear  our  condemnation  if  we  stick  to  the 
customary  too  long,  and  so  miss  our  signal  oppor- 
tunities. In  their  apathy,  in  their  self-satisfied  ignor- 
ance, in  their  dulness  of  apprehension  and  forethought, 
the  authorities  of  the  University  let  pass  the  great 
opportunity  of  their  time.  As  it  usually  happens,  when 
this  posture  of  lofty  ignoring  what  is  palpable  and 
active,  and  the  object  of  everybody's  thought,  goes  on 


216  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

too  long,  it  is  apt  to  turn  into  impatient  dislike  and 
bitter  antipathy.  The  Heads  of  Houses  drifted  insen- 
sibly into  this  position.  They  had  not  taken  the 
trouble  to  understand  the  movement,  to  discriminate 
between  its  aspects,  to  put  themselves  frankly  into 
communication  with  its  leading  persons,  to  judge  with 
the  knowledge  and  justice  of  scholars  and  clergymen 
of  its  designs  and  ways.  They  let  themselves  be 
diverted  from  this,  their  proper  though  troublesome 
task,  by  distrust,  by  the  jealousies  of  their  position,  by 
the  impossibility  of  conceiving  that  anything  so  strange 
could  really  be  true  and  sound.  And  at  length  they 
found  themselves  going  along  with  the  outside  current 
of  uninstructed  and  ignoble  prejudice,  in  a  settled  and 
pronounced  dislike,  which  took  for  granted  that  all  was 
wrong  in  the  movement,  which  admitted  any  ill-natured 
surmise  and  foolish  misrepresentation,  and  really 
allowed  itself  to  acquiesce  in  the  belief  that  men  so 
well  known  in  Oxford,  once  so  admired  and  honoured, 
had  sunk  down  to  deliberate  corrupters  of  the  truth, 
and  palterers  with  their  own  intellects  and  consciences. 
It  came  in  a  few  years  to  be  understood  on  both  sides, 
that  the  authorities  were  in  direct  antagonism  to  the 
movement ;  and  though  their  efforts  in  opposition  to 
it  were  feeble  and  petty,  it  went  on  under  the  dead 
weight  of  official  University  disapproval.  It  would 
have  been  a  great  thing  for  the  English  Church- 
though  it  is  hard  to  see  how,  things  being  as  they  were, 
it  could  have  come  about — if  the  movement  had  gone 
on,  at  least  with  the  friendly  interest,  if  not  with  the 
support,  of  the  University  rulers.  Instead  of  that, 
after  the  first  two  or  three  years  there  was  one  long 
and  bitter  fight  in  Oxford,  with  the  anger  on  one  side 
created  by  the  belief  of  vague  but  growing  dangers, 


xiii         THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT          217 

and  a  sense  of  incapacity  in  resisting  them,  and  with 
deep  resentment  at  injustice  and  stupidity  on  the  other. 
The  Bishops  were  farther  from  the  immediate 
scene  of  the  movement,  and  besides,  had  other  things 
to  think  of.  Three  or  four  of  them  might  be  con- 
sidered theologians — Archbishop  Howley,  Phillpotts  of 
Exeter,  Kaye  of  Lincoln,  Marsh  of  Peterborough. 
Two  or  three  belonged  to  the  Evangelical  school, 
Ryder  of  Lichfield,  and  the  two  Sumners  at  Winchester 
and  Chester.  The  most  prominent  among  them,  and 
next  to  the  Bishop  of  Exeter  the  ablest,  alive  to  the 
real  dangers  of  the  Church,  anxious  to  infuse  vigour 
into  its  work,  and  busy  with  plans  for  extending 
its  influence,  was  Blomfield,  Bishop  of  London.  But 
Blomfield  was  not  at  his  best  as  a  divine,  and,  for  a 
man  of  his  unquestionable  power,  singularly  unsure  of 
his  own  mind.  He  knew,  in  fact,  that  when  the 
questions  raised  by  the  Tracts  came  before  him  he  was 
unqualified  to  deal  with  them ;  he  was  no  better 
furnished  by  thought  or  knowledge  or  habits  to 
judge  of  them  than  the  average  Bishop  of  the  time, 
appointed,  as  was  so  often  the  case,  for  political  or 
personal  reasons.  At  the  first  start  of  the  movement, 
they  not  unnaturally  waited  to  see  what  would  come 
of  it.  It  was  indeed  an  effort  in  favour  of  the  Church, 
but  it  was  in  irresponsible  hands,  begun  by  men 
whose  words  were  strong  and  vehement  and  of  un- 
usual sound,  and  who,  while  they  called  on  the  clergy 
to  rally  round  their  fathers  the  Bishops,  did  not  shrink 
from  wishing  for  the  Bishops  the  fortunes  of  the  early 
days  :  "  we  could  not  wish  them  a  more  blessed  ter- 
mination of  their  course  than  the  spoiling  of  their 
goods  and  martyrdom."1  It  may  reasonably  be  sup- 

1   Tracts  for  the  Times,  No.  I,  9th  September  1833. 


2i8  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

posed  that  such  good  wishes  were  not  to  the  taste  of 
all  of  them.  As  the  movement  developed,  besides 
that  it  would  seem  to  them  extravagant  and  violent, 
they  would  be  perplexed  by  its  doctrine.  It  took  strong 
ground  for  the  Church ;  but  it  did  so  in  the  teeth  of 
religious  opinions  and  prejudices,  which  were  popular 
and  intolerant.  For  a  moment  the  Bishops  were  in  a 
difficulty  ;  on  the  one  hand,  no  one  for  generations  had 
so  exalted  the  office  of  a  Bishop  as  the  Tractarians  ;  no 
one  had  claimed  for  it  so  high  and  sacred  an  origin ; 
no  one  had  urged  with  such  practical  earnestness  the 
duty  of  Churchmen  to  recognise  and  maintain  the 
unique  authority  of  the  Episcopate  against  its  despisers 
or  oppressors.  On  the  other  hand,  this  was  just  the 
time  when  the  Evangelical  party,  after  long  disfavour, 
was  beginning  to  gain  recognition,  for  the  sake  of  its 
past  earnestness  and  good  works,  with  men  in  power, 
and  with  ecclesiastical  authorities  of  a  different  and 
hitherto  hostile  school ;  and  in  the  Tractarian  move- 
ment the  Evangelical  party  saw  from  the  first  its 
natural  enemy.  The  Bishops  could  not  have  anything 
to  do  with  the  Tractarians  without  deeply  offending 
the  Evangelicals.  The  result  was  that,  for  the  present, 
the  Bishops  held  aloof.  They  let  the  movement 
run  on  by  itself.  Sharp  sarcasms,  worldly-wise  pre- 
dictions, kind  messages  of  approval,  kind  cautions, 
passed  from  mouth  to  mouth,  or  in  private  corre- 
spondence from  high  quarters,  which  showed  that  the 
movement  was  watched.  But  for  some  time  the 
authorities  spoke  neither  good  nor  bad  of  it  publicly. 
In  his  Charge  at  the  close  of  1836,  Bishop  Phillpotts 
spoke  in  clear  and  unfaltering  language  —  language 
remarkable  for  its  bold  decision — of  the  necessity  of 
setting  forth  the  true  idea  of  the  Church  and  the  sacra- 


xin          THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT         219 

ments ;  but  he  was  silent  about  the  call  of  the  same 
kind  which  had  come  from  Oxford.  It  would  have 
been  well  if  the  other  Bishops  later  on,  in  their 
charges,  had  followed  his  example.  The  Bishop  of 
Oxford,  in  his  Charge  of  1838,  referred  to  the  move- 
ment in  balanced  terms  of  praise  and  warning.  The 
first  who  condemned  the  movement  was  the  Bishop 
of  Chester,  J.  Bird  Sumner ;  in  a  later  Charge  he 
came  to  describe  it  as  the  work  of  Satan  ;  in  1838 
he  only  denounced  the  "undermining  of  the  found- 
ations of  our  Protestant  Church  by  men  who  dwell 
within  her  walls,"  and  the  bad  faith  of  those 
"  who  sit  in  the  Reformers'  seat,  and  traduced  the 
Reformation." 

These  were  grave  mistakes  on  the  part  of  those 
who  were  responsible  for  the  government  of  the 
University  and  the  Church.  They  treated  as  absurd, 
mischievous,  and  at  length  traitorous,  an  effort,  than 
which  nothing  could  be  more  sincere,  to  serve  the 
Church,  to  place  its  claims  on  adequate  grounds,  to 
elevate  the  standard  of  duty  in  its  clergy,  and  in 
all  its  members.  To  have  missed  the  aim  of  the 
movement  and  to  have  been  occupied  and  irritated 
by  obnoxious  details  and  vulgar  suspicions  was  a 
blunder  which  gave  the  measure  of  those  who  made 
it,  and  led  to  great  evils.  They  alienated  those  who 
wished  for  nothing  better  than  to  help  them  in  their 
true  work.  Their  "unkindness"  was  felt  to  be,  in 
Bacon's  phrase,1  injurice  potentiorum.  But  on  the 
side  of  the  party  of  the  movement  there  were  mistakes 
also. 

i.  The  rapidity  with  which  the  movement  had 
grown,  showing  that  some  deep  need  had  long  been 

1  Discourse  on  "  Church  Controversies"  ;  Spedding's  Bacon>  vol.  i. 


220  THE  OXFORD  MO  VEMENT  CHAP. 

obscurely  felt,  which  the  movement  promised  to  meet,1 
had  been  too  great  to  be  altogether  wholesome.  When 
we  compare  what  was  commonly  received  before  1833, 
in  teaching,  in  habits  of  life,  in  the  ordinary  assumptions 
of  history,  in  the  ideas  and  modes  of  worship,  public 
and  private — the  almost  sacramental  conception  of 
preaching,  the  neglect  of  the  common  prayer  of  the 
Prayer  Book,  the  slight  regard  to  the  sacraments — with 
what  the  teaching  of  the  Tracts  and  their  writers  had 
impressed  for  good  and  all,  five  years  later,  on  numbers 
of  earnest  people,  the  change  seems  astonishing.  The 
change  was  a  beneficial  one  and  it  was  a  permanent 
one.  The  minds  which  it  affected,  it  affected  pro- 
foundly. Still  it  was  but  a  short  time,  for  young 
minds  especially,  to  have  come  to  a  decision  on  great 
and  debated  questions.  There  was  the  possibility, 
the  danger,  of  men  having  been  captivated  and  carried 
away  by  the  excitement  and  interest  of  the  time  ;  of 
not  having  looked  all  round  and  thought  out  the  diffi- 
culties before  them ;  of  having  embraced  opinions 
without  sufficiently  knowing  their  grounds  or  counting 
the  cost  or  considering  the  consequences.  There  was 
the  danger  of  precipitate  judgment,  of  ill -balanced 
and  disproportionate  views  of  what  was  true  and  all- 
important.  There  was  an  inevitable  feverishness  in 
the  way  in  which  the  movement  was  begun,  in  the  way 
in  which  it  went  on.  Those  affected  by  it  were  them- 
selves surprised  at  the  swiftness  of  the  pace.  When 
a  cause  so  great  and  so  sacred  seemed  thus  to  be 
flourishing,  and  carrying  along  with  it  men's  assent 
and  sympathies,  it  was  hardly  wonderful  that  there 

1   See  Mr.  Newman's  article,  "  The      in  his  Essays  Historical  and  Critical, 
State    of    Religious    Parties,"    in    the      1871,  Vol.  I.,  essay  vi. 
British  Critic,   April    1839,   reprinted 


xni          THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT         221 

should  often  be  exaggeration,  impatience  at  resistance, 
scant  consideration  for  the  slowness  or  the  scruples  or 
the  alarms  of  others.  Eager  and  sanguine  men  talked 
as  if  their  work  was  accomplished,  when  in  truth  it 
was  but  beginning.  No  one  gave  more  serious 
warnings  against  this  and  other  dangers  than  the 
leaders  ;  and  their  warnings  were  needed.1 

2.  Another  mistake,  akin  to  the  last,  was  the 
frequent  forgetfulness  of  the  apostolic  maxim,  "  All 
things  are  lawful  for  me,  but  all  things  are  not  ex- 
pedient." In  what  almost  amounted  to  a  revolution 
in  many  of  the  religious  ideas  of  the  time,  it  was 
especially  important  to  keep  distinct  the  great  central 
truths,  the  restoration  of  which  to  their  proper  place 
justified  and  made  it  necessary,  and  the  many  sub- 
ordinate points  allied  with  them  and  naturally  follow- 
ing from  them,  which  yet  were  not  necessary  to  their 
establishment  or  acceptance.  But  it  was  on  these 
subordinate  points  that  the  interest  of  a  certain  number 
of  followers  of  the  movement  was  fastened.  Con- 
clusions which  they  had  a  perfect  right  to  come  to, 
practices  innocent  and  edifying  to  themselves,  but  of 
secondary  account,  began  to  be  thrust  forward  into 
prominence,  whether  or  not  these  instances  of  self- 

-  1  "  It  would  not  be  at  all  surprising,  opinions  of  a  movement  party,  who 
though,  in  spite  of  the  earnestness  of  talk  loudly  and  strangely,  do  odd  and 
the  principal  advocates  of  the  views  fierce  things,  display  themselves  un- 
in  question,  for  which  every  one  seems  necessarily,  and  disgust  other  people ; 
to  give  them  credit,  there  should  be  there  will  ever  be  those  who  are  too 
among  their  followers  much  that  is  young  to  be  wise,  too  generous  to  be 
enthusiastic,  extravagant,  or  excessive.  cautious,  too  warm  to  be  sober,  or  too 
All  these  aberrations  will  be  and  are  intellectual  to  be  humble ;  of  whom 
imputed  to  the  doctrines  from  which  human  sagacity  cannot  determine,  only 
they  proceed ;  nor  unnaturally,  but  the  event,  and  perhaps  not  even  that, 
hardly  fairly,  for  aberrations  there  must  whether  they  feel  what  they  say,  or 
be,  whatever  the  doctrine  is,  while  the  how  far  ;  whether  they  are  to  be  en- 
human  heart  is  sensitive,  capricious,  couraged  or  discountenanced." — British 
and  wayward.  .  .  .  There  will  ever  be  Critic,  April  1839,  "  State  of  Religious 
a  number  of  persons  professing  the  Parties,"  p.  405. 


222  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

will  really  helped  the  common  cause,  whether  or  not 
they  gave  a  handle  to  ill-nature  and  ill-will.  Suspicion 
must  always  have  attached  to  such  a  movement  as 
this ;  but  a  great  deal  of  it  was  provoked  by  indis- 
creet defiance,  which  was  rather  glad  to  provoke  it. 

3.  Apart  from  these  incidents — common  wherever 
a  number  of  men  are  animated  with  zeal  for  an  in- 
spiring cause  —  there  were  what  to  us  now  seem 
mistakes  made  in  the  conduct  itself  of  the  movement. 
Considering  the  difficulties  of  the  work,  it  is  wonderful 
that  there  were  not  more ;  and  none  of  them  were 
discreditable,  none  but  what  arose  from  the  limitation 
of  human  powers  matched  against  confused  and  baffling 
circumstances. 

In  the  position  claimed  for  the  Church  of  England, 
confessedly  unique  and  anomalous  in  the  history  of 
Christendom,  between  Roman  authority  and  infalli- 
bility on  one  side,  and  Protestant  freedom  of  private 
judgment  on  the  other,  the  question  would  at  once 
arise  as  to  the  grounds  of  belief.  What,  if  any,  are 
the  foundations  of  conviction  and  certitude,  apart  from 
personal  inquiry,  and  examination  of  opposing  argu- 
ments on  different  sides  of  the  case,  and  satisfactory 
logical  conclusions  ?  The  old  antithesis  between 
Faith  and  Reason,  and  the  various  problems  con- 
nected with  it,  could  not  but  come  to  the  front,  and 
require  to  be  dealt  with.  It  is  a  question  which  faces 
us  from  a  hundred  sides,  and,  subtly  and  insensibly 
transforming  itself,  looks  different  from  them  all.  It 
was  among  the  earliest  attempted  to  be  solved  by  the 
chief  intellectual  leader  of  the  movement,  and  it  has 
occupied  his  mind  to  the  last.1  However  near  the 
human  mind  seems  to  come  to  a  solution,  it  only,  if  so 

1  Cardinal  Newman,  Grammar  of  Assent, 


xiii          THE  A  UTHORITIES  AND  THE  MO  VEMENT          223 

be,  comes  near;  it  never  arrives.      In  the  early  days 
of  the  movement  it  found  prevailing  the  specious  but 
shallow  view  that  everything  in  the  search  for  truth 
was  to  be  done  by  mere  producible  and  explicit  argu- 
mentation ;   and  yet  it  was  obvious  that  of  this  two- 
thirds  of  the  world  are  absolutely  incapable.     Against 
this  Mr.  Newman  and  his  followers  pressed,  what  was 
as  manifestly  certain  in  fact  as  it  accorded  with  any 
deep  and  comprehensive  philosophy  of  the  formation 
and  growth  of  human  belief,  that  not  arguments  only, 
but  the  whole  condition  of  the   mind  to  which  they 
were  addressed — and  not  the  reasonings  only  which 
could  be  stated,  but  those  which  went  on  darkly  in 
the  mind,  and  which  "  there  was  not  at  the  moment 
strength    to    bring    forth,"    real    and  weighty  reasons 
which   acted  like  the  obscure  rays  of  the  spectrum, 
with  their  proper  force,  yet  eluding  distinct  observa- 
tion— had   their  necessary  and  inevitable  and  legiti- 
mate place  in  determining  belief.     All  this  was  per- 
fectly true ;  but  it  is  obvious  how  easily  it  might  be 
taken  hold  of,  on  very  opposite  sides,  as  a  ground  for 
saying  that  Tractarian  or  Church  views  did  not  care 
about   argument,    or,    indeed,    rather   preferred    weak 
arguments  to  strong  ones  in  the  practical  work  of  life. 
It  was  ludicrous  to  say  it  in   a  field  of  controversy, 
which,    on    the    "  Tractarian "    side,    was    absolutely 
bristling   with    argument,    keen,    subtle,    deep,    living 
argument,  and  in  which  the  victory  in  argument  was 
certainly    not    always    with    those   who    ventured    to 
measure   swords  with    Mr.    Newman    or    Dr.    Pusey. 
Still,  the  scoff  could  be  plausibly  pointed  at  the  "  young 
enthusiasts   who   crowded   the   Via    Media,   and   who 
never  presumed  to  argue,  except  against  the  propriety 
of  arguing  at  all."     There  was  a  good  deal  of  foolish 


224  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

sneering  at  reason  ;  there  was  a  good  deal  of  silly 
bravado  about  not  caring  whether  the  avowed  grounds 
of  opinions  taken  up  were  strong  or  feeble.  It  was  not 
merely  the  assent  of  a  learner  to  his  teacher,  of  a  mind 
without  means  of  instruction  to  the  belief  which  it  has 
inherited,  or  of  one  new  to  the  ways  and  conditions  of 
life  to  the  unproved  assertions  and  opinions  of  one  to 
whom  experience  had  given  an  open  and  sure  eye. 
It  was  a  positive  carelessness,  almost  accounted  merit- 
orious, to  inquire  and  think,  when  their  leaders  called 
them  to  do  so.  "  The  Gospel  of  Christ  is  not  a 
matter  of  mere  argument."  It  is  not,  indeed,  when  it 
comes  in  its  full  reality,  in  half  a  hundred  different 
ways,  known  and  unsearchable,  felt  and  unfelt,  moral 
and  intellectual,  on  the  awakened  and  quickened  soul. 
But  the  wildest  fanatic  can  take  the  same  words  into 
his  mouth.  Their  true  meaning  was  variously  and 
abundantly  illustrated,  especially  in  Mr.  Newman's 
sermons.  Still,  the  adequate,  the  emphatic  warning 
against  their  early  abuse  was  hardly  pressed  on  the 
public  opinion  and  sentiment  of  the  party  of  the 
movement  with  the  force  which  really  was  requisite. 
To  the  end  there  were  men  who  took  up  their  belief 
avowedly  on  insufficient  and  precarious  grounds,  glory- 
ing in  the  venturesomeness  of  their  faith  and  courage, 
and  justifying  their  temper  of  mind  and  their  intel- 
lectual attitude  by  alleging  misinterpreted  language 
of  their  wiser  and  deeper  teachers.  A  recoil  from 
Whately's  hard  and  barren  dialectics,  a  sympathy  with 
many  tender  and  refined  natures  which  the  movement 
had  touched,  made  the  leaders  patient  with  intellectual 
feebleness  when  it  was  joined  with  real  goodness 
and  Christian  temper ;  but  this  also  sometimes  made 
them  less  impatient  than  they  might  well  have  been 


xni          THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT         225 

with  that  curious  form  of  conceit  and  affectation  which 
veils  itself  under  an  intended  and  supposed  humility, 
a  supposed  distrust  of  self  and  its  own  powers. 

Another  difficult  matter,  not  altogether  successfully 
managed — at  least  from  the  original  point  of  view  of 
the  movement,  and  of  those  who  saw  in  it  a  great 
effort  for  the  good  of  the  English  Church — was  the 
treatment  of  the  Roman  controversy.  The  general 
line  which  the  leaders  proposed  to  take  was  the 
one  which  was  worthy  of  Christian  and  truth-loving 
teachers.  They  took  a  new  departure  ;  and  it  was  not 
less  just  than  it  was  brave,  when,  recognising  to  the 
full  the  overwhelming  reasons  why  "we  should  not 
be  Romanists,"  they  refused  to  take  up  the  popular 
and  easy  method  of  regarding  the  Roman  Church  as 
apostate  and  antichristian ;  and  declined  to  commit 
themselves  to  the  vulgar  and  indiscriminate  abuse  of 
it  which  was  the  discreditable  legacy  of  the  old  days 
of  controversy.  They  did  what  all  the  world  was 
loudly  professing  to  do,  they  looked  facts  in  the  face ; 
they  found,  as  any  one  would  find  who  looked  for 
himself  into  the  realities  of  the  Roman  Church,  that 
though  the  bad  was  often  as  bad  as  could  be,  there  was 
still,  and  there  had  been  all  along,  goodness  of  the 
highest  type,  excellence  both  of  system  and  of  per- 
sonal life  which  it  was  monstrous  to  deny,  and  which 
we  might  well  admire  and  envy.  To  ignore  all  this 
was  to  fail  in  the  first  duty,  not  merely  of  Christians, 
but  of  honest  men ;  and  we  at  home  were  not  so 
blameless  that  we  could  safely  take  this  lofty  tone  of 
contemptuous  superiority.  If  Rome  would  only  leave 
us  alone,  there  would  be  estrangement,  lamentable 
enough  among  Christians,  but  there  need  be  no  bitter- 
ness. But  Rome  would  not  leave  us  alone.  The 

Q 


226  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

moment  that  there  were  signs  of  awakening  energy  in 
England,  that  moment  was  chosen  by  its  agents,  for 
now  it  could  be  done  safely,  to  assail  and  thwart  the 
English  Church.  Doubtless  they  were  within  their 
rights,  but  this  made  controversy  inevitable,  and  for 
controversy  the  leaders  of  the  movement  prepared 
themselves.  It  was  an  obstacle  which  they  seemed 
hardly  to  have  expected,  but  which  the  nature  of 
things  placed  in  their  way.  But  the  old  style  of  con- 
troversy was  impossible  ;  impossible  because  it  was  so 
coarse,  impossible  because  it  was  so  hollow. 

If  the  argument  (says  the  writer  of  Tract  71,  in  words  which  are 
applicable  to  every  controversy)  is  radically  unreal,  or  (what  may  be 
called)  rhetorical  or  sophistical,  it  may  serve  the  purpose  of  en- 
couraging those  who  are  really  convinced,  though  scarcely  without 
doing  mischief  to  them,  but  certainly  it  will  offend  and  alienate  the 
more  acute  and  sensible ;  while  those  who  are  in  doubt,  and  who 
desire  some  real  and  substantial  ground  for  their  faith,  will  not  bear 
to  be  put  off  with  such  shadows.  The  arguments  (he  continues) 
which  we  use  must  be  such  as  are  likely  to  convince  serious  and 
earnest  minds,  which  are  really  seeking  for  the  truth,  not  amusing 
themselves  with  intellectual  combats,  or  desiring  to  support  an 
existing  opinion  anyhow.  However  popular  these  latter  methods 
may  be,  of  however  long  standing,  however  easy  both  to  find  and 
to  use,  they  are  a  scandal;  and  while  they  lower  our  religious 
standard  from  the  first,  they  are  sure  of  hurting  our  cause  in  the 
end. 

And  on  this  principle  the  line  of  argument  in  The 
Prophetical  Office  of  the  Church  was  taken  by  Mr. 
Newman.  It  was  certainly  no  make-believe,  or  unreal 
argument.  It  was  a  forcible  and  original  way  of 
putting  part  of  the  case  against  Rome.  It  was  part 
of  the  case,  a  very  important  part ;  but  it  was  not  the 
whole  case,  and  it  ought  to  have  been  evident  from 


xiii         THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT         227 

the  first  that  in  this  controversy  we  could  not  afford  to 
do  without  the  whole  case.  The  argument  from  the 
claim  of  infallibility  said  nothing  of  what  are  equally 
real  parts  of  the  case — the  practical  working  of  the 
Roman  Church,  its  system  of  government,  the  part 
which  it  and  its  rulers  have  played  in  the  history  of 
the  world.  Rome  has  not  such  a  clean  record  of 
history,  it  has  not  such  a  clean  account  of  what  is  done 
and  permitted  in  its  dominions  under  an  authority 
supposed  to  be  irresistible,  that  it  can  claim  to  be  the 
one  pure  and  perfect  Church,  entitled  to  judge  and 
correct  and  govern  all  other  Churches.  And  if  the 
claim  is  made,  there  is  no  help  for  it,  we  must  not 
shrink  from  the  task  of  giving  the  answer.1  And,  as 
experience  has  shown,  the  more  that  rigid  good  faith 
is  kept  to  in  giving  the  answer,  the  more  that  strict- 
ness and  severity  of  even  understatement  are  observed, 
the  more  convincing  will  be  the  result  that  the  Roman 
Church  cannot  be  that  which  it  is  alleged  to  be  in  its 
necessary  theory  and  ideal. 

But  this  task  was  never  adequately  undertaken.  It 
was  one  of  no  easy  execution.2  Other  things,  apparently 
more  immediately  pressing,  intervened.  There  was  no 
question  for  the  present  of  perfect  and  unfeigned  con- 
fidence in  the  English  Church,  with  whatever  regrets 
for  its  shortcomings,  and  desires  for  its  improvement. 
But  to  the  outside  world  it  seemed  as  if  there  were  a 
reluctance  to  face  seriously  the  whole  of  the  Roman 

1  The    argument    from    history    is  advocate.     Yet   the  supreme  duty  in 
sketched  fairly,  but  only  sketched  in  religious  controversy  is  justice.       But 
The  Prophetic  Office,  Lect.  xiv.  for  the  very  reason  that  these  contro- 

2  In  the  Roman    controversy   it    is  versialists  wished  to  be  just  to  Rome, 
sometimes    hard    to    be   just    without  they  were  bound  to  be  just  against  her. 
appearing  to  mean  more  than  is  said  ;  They    meant    to    be  so  ;    but    events 
for  the  obligation  of  justice  sometimes  passed  quickly,  and  leisure  never  came 
forces   one  who  wishes    to   be    a  fair  for  a  work  which  involved  a  serious 
judge  to  be  apparently  an  apologist  or  appeal  to  history. 


228  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

controversy ;  a  disposition  to  be  indulgent  to  Roman 
defects,  and  unfairly  hard  on  English  faults.  How 
mischievously  this  told  in  the  course  of  opinion  outside 
and  inside  of  the  movement ;  how  it  was  misinterpreted 
and  misrepresented  ;  how  these  misinterpretations  and 
misrepresentations,  with  the  bitterness  and  injustice 
which  they  engendered,  helped  to  realise  themselves, 
was  seen  but  too  clearly  at  a  later  stage. 

4.  Lastly,  looking  back  on  the  publications,  re- 
garded as  characteristic  of  the  party,  it  is  difficult  not 
to  feel  that  some  of  them  gave  an  unfortunate  and 
unnecessary  turn  to  things. 

The  book  which  made  most  stir  and  caused  the 
greatest  outcry  was  Froude's  Remains.  It  was 
undoubtedly  a  bold  experiment ;  but  it  was  not 
merely  boldness.  Except  that  it  might  be  perverted 
into  an  excuse  by  the  shallow  and  thoughtless  for 
merely  "strong  talk,"  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  it  was 
right  and  wise  to  let  the  world  know  the  full  measure 
and  depth  of  conviction  which  gave  birth  to  the 
movement ;  and  Froude's  Remains  did  that  in  an 
unsuspiciously  genuine  way  that  nothing  else  could 
have  done.  And,  besides,  it  was  worth  while  for  its  own 
sake  to  exhibit  with  fearless  honesty  such  a  character, 
so  high,  so  true,  so  refined,  so  heroic.  So  again,  Dr. 
Pusey's  Tract  on  Baptism  was  a  bold  book,  and  one 
which  brought  heavy  imputations  and  misconstructions 
on  the  party.  In  the  teaching  of  his  long  life,  Dr. 
Pusey  has  abundantly  dispelled  the  charges  of  harsh- 
ness and  over-severity  which  were  urged,  not  always 
very  scrupulously,  against  the  doctrine  of  the  Tract  on 
Post-baptismal  Sin.  But  it  was  written  to  redress  the 
balance  against  the  fatally  easy  doctrines  then  in 
fashion ;  it  was  like  the  Portroyalist  protest  against 


xin         THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT         229 

the  fashionable  Jesuits ;  it  was  one-sided,  and  some- 
times, in  his  earnestness,  unguarded ;   and  it  wanted 
as  yet  the  complement  of  encouragement,  consolation, 
and  tenderness  which  his  future  teaching  was  to  supply 
so  amply.     But   it  was  a   blow  struck,  not  before  it 
was  necessary,  by  a  strong  hand  ;  and  it  may  safely  be 
said   that    it   settled   the   place    of  the   sacrament  of 
baptism  in  the  living  system  of  the  English  Church, 
which  the  negations  and  vagueness  of  the  Evangelical 
party  had  gravely  endangered.      But  two  other  essays 
appeared  in  the  Tracts,  most  innocent  in  themselves, 
which    ten   or   twenty  years   later  would   have   been 
judged  simply  on  their  merits,  but  which  at  the  time 
became  potent  weapons  against  Tractarianism.     They 
were  the  productions  of  two  poets — of  two  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  religious  minds  of  their  time ;  but  in  that 
stage  of  the  movement  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  they  were  out  of  place.     The  cause  of  the  move- 
ment needed  clear  explanations  ;  definite  statements  of 
doctrines  which  were  popularly  misunderstood ;  plain, 
convincing  reasoning  on  the  issues  which  were  raised 
by  it ;   a  careful  laying  out  of  the  ground  on  which 
English  theology  was  to  be  strengthened  and  enriched. 
Such  were   Mr.   Newman's  Lectures  on  Justification, 
a  work  which  made  its  lasting  mark  on  English  theo- 
logical  thought ;   Mr.   Keble's   masterly  exposition  of 
the  meaning  of  Tradition  ;  and  not  least,  the  important 
collections    which    were    documentary   and    historical 
evidence  of  the  character  of   English   theology,   the 
so-called   laborious    Catenas.      These   were    the   real 
tasks  of  the  hour,  and  they  needed  all  that  labour  and 
industry  could  give.     But  the  first  of  these  inoppor- 
tune Tracts  was   an  elaborate  essay,  by  Mr.   Keble, 
on  the   "  Mysticism  of  the   Fathers    in  the  use  and 


230  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

interpretation  of  Scripture."  It  was  hardly  what  the 
practical  needs  of  the  time  required,  and  it  took  away 
men's  thoughts  from  them  ;  the  prospect  was  hopeless 
that  in  that  state  of  men's  minds  it  should  be  under- 
stood, except  by  a  very  few ;  it  merely  helped  to  add 
another  charge,  the  vague  but  mischievous  charge  of 
mysticism,  to  the  list  of  accusations  against  the  Tracts. 
The  other,  to  the  astonishment  of  every  one,  was  like 
the  explosion  of  a  mine.  That  it  should  be  criticised 
and  objected  to  was  natural ;  but  the  extraordinary 
irritation  caused  by  it  could  hardly  have  been  anti- 
cipated. Written  in  the  most  devout  and  reverent 
spirit  by  one  of  the  gentlest  and  most  refined  of 
scholars,  and  full  of  deep  Scriptural  knowledge,  it 
furnished  for  some  years  the  material  for  the  most 
savage  attacks  and  the  bitterest  sneers  to  the  oppo- 
nents of  the  movement.  It  was  called  "  On  Reserve 
in  communicating  Religious  Knowledge";  and  it  was 
a  protest  against  the  coarseness  and  shallowness  which 
threw  the  most  sacred  words  about  at  random  in  loud 
and  declamatory  appeals,  and  which  especially  dragged 
in  the  awful  mystery  of  the  Atonement,  under  the 
crudest  and  most  vulgar  conception  of  it,  as  a  ready 
topic  of  excitement  in  otherwise  commonplace  and  help- 
less preaching.  The  word  "  Reserve "  was  enough. 
It  meant  that  the  Tract-writers  avowed  the  principle 
of  keeping  back  part  of  the  counsel  of  God.  It  meant, 
further,  that  the  real  spirit  of  the  party  was  disclosed ; 
its  love  of  secret  and  crooked  methods,  its  indifference 
to  knowledge,  its  disingenuous  professions,  its  deliberate 
concealments,  its  holding  doctrines  and  its  pursuit  of 
aims  which  it  dared  not  avow,  its  disciplina  arcani, 
its  conspiracies,  its  Jesuitical  spirit.  All  this  kind  of 
abuse  was  flung  plentifully  on  the  party  as  the  con- 


xiii         THE  AUTHORITIES  AND  THE  MOVEMENT         231 

troversy  became  warm  ;  and  it  mainly  justified  itself 
by  the  Tract  on  "  Reserve."  The  Tract  was  in  many 
ways  a  beautiful  and  suggestive  essay,  full  of  deep  and 
original  thoughts,  though  composed  in  that  spirit  of 
the  recluse  which  was  characteristic  of  the  writer,  and 
which  is  in  strong  contrast  with  the  energetic  temper 
of  to-day.1  But  it  could  well  have  been  spared  at  the 
moment,  and  it  certainly  offered  itself  to  an  unfortunate 
use.  The  suspiciousness  which  so  innocently  it  helped 
to  awaken  and  confirm  was  never  again  allayed. 

1    Vide    a    striking    review    in    the      reeling  and  guarding  the  view  given  in 
British  Critic,  April  1839,  partly  cor-      the  Tract. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

No.  90 

THE  formation  of  a  strong  Romanising  section  in  the 
Tractarian  party  was  obviously  damaging  to  the  party 
and  dangerous  to  the  Church.  It  was  pro  tanto  a 
verification  of  the  fundamental  charge  against  the 
party,  a  charge  which  on  paper  they  had  met  success- 
fully, but  which  acquired  double  force  when  this  paper 
defence  was  traversed  by  facts.  And  a  great  blow 
was  impending  over  the  Church,  if  the  zeal  and  ability 
which  the  movement  had  called  forth  and  animated 
were  to  be  sucked  away  from  the  Church,  and  not  only 
lost  to  it,  but  educated  into  a  special  instrument  against 
it.  But  the  divergence  became  clear  only  gradually, 
and  the  hope  that  after  all  it  was  only  temporary  and 
would  ultimately  disappear  was  long  kept  up  by  the 
tenacity  with  which  Mr.  Newman,  in  spite  of  mis- 
givings and  disturbing  thoughts,  still  recognised  the 
gifts  and  claims  of  the  English  Church.  And  on  the 
other  hand,  the  bulk  of  the  party,  and  its  other  Oxford 
leaders,  Dr.  Pusey,  Mr.  Keble,  Mr.  Isaac  Williams, 
Mr.  Marriott,  were  quite  unaffected  by  the  disquieting 
apprehensions  which  were  beginning  to  beset  Mr. 
Newman.  With  a  humbling  consciousness  of  the 
practical  shortcomings  of  the  English  Church,  with  a 


CHAP.  XIV  NO.  90  233 

ready  disposition  to  be  honest  and  just  towards  Rome, 
and  even  to  minimise  our  differences  with  it,  they  had 
not  admitted  for  a  moment  any  doubt  of  the  reality  of 
the  English  Church.  The  class  of  arguments  which 
specially  laid  hold  of  Mr.  Newman's  mind  did  not 
tell  upon  them — the  peculiar  aspect  of  early  precedents, 
about  which,  moreover,  a  good  deal  of  criticism  was 
possible ;  or  the  large  and  sweeping  conception  of  a 
vast,  ever-growing,  imperial  Church,  great  enough  to 
make  flaws  and  imperfections  of  no  account,  which 
appealed  so  strongly  to  his  statesmanlike  imagination. 
Their  content  with  the  Church  in  which  they  had  been 
brought  up,  in  which  they  had  been  taught  religion, 
and  in  which  they  had  taken  service,  their  deep  and 
affectionate  loyalty  and  piety  to  it,  in  spite  of  all  its 
faults,  remained  unimpaired  ;  and  unimpaired,  also,  was 
their  sense  of  vast  masses  of  practical  evil  in  the 
Roman  Church,  evils  from  which  they  shrank  both  as 
Englishmen  and  as  Christians,  and  which  seemed  as 
incurable  as  they  were  undeniable.  Beyond  the  hope 
which  they  vaguely  cherished  that  some  day  or  other, 
by  some  great  act  of  Divine  mercy,  these  evils  might 
disappear,  and  the  whole  Church  become  once  more 
united,  there  was  nothing  to  draw  them  towards  Rome  ; 
submission  was  out  of  the  question,  and  they  could 
only  see  in  its  attitude  in  England  the  hostility  of  a 
jealous  and  unscrupulous  disturber  of  their  Master's 
work.  The  movement  still  went  on,  with  its  original 
purpose,  and  on  its  original  lines,  in  spite  of  the 
presence  in  it,  and  even  the  co-operation,  of  men  who 
might  one  day  have  other  views,  and  serious  and  fatal 
differences  with  their  old  friends. 

The  change  of  religion  when  it  comes  on  a  man 
gradually, — when  it  is  not  welcomed   from   the  first, 


234  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

but,  on  the  contrary,  long  resisted,  must  always  be  a 
mysterious  and  perplexing  process,  hard  to  realise  and 
follow  by  the  person  most  deeply  interested,  veiled 
and  clouded  to  lookers-on,  because  naturally  belonging 
to  the  deepest  depths  of  the  human  conscience,  and 
inevitably,  and  without  much  fault  on  either  side,  liable 
to  be  misinterpreted  and  misunderstood.  And  this 
process  is  all  the  more  tangled  when  it  goes  on,  not  in 
an  individual  mind,  travelling  in  its  own  way  on  its 
own  path,  little  affected  by  others,  and  little  affecting 
them,  but  in  a  representative  person,  with  the  responsi- 
bilities of  a  great  cause  upon  him,  bound  by  closest 
ties  of  every  kind  to  friends,  colleagues,  and  disciples, 
thinking,  feeling,  leading,  pointing  out  the  way  for 
hundreds  who  love  and  depend  on  him.  Views  and 
feelings  vary  from  day  to  day,  according  to  the  events 
and  conditions  of  the  day.  How  shall  he  speak,  and 
how  shall  he  be  silent  ?  How  shall  he  let  doubts  and 
difficulties  appear,  yet  how  shall  he  suppress  them  ? — 
Doubts  which  may  grow  and  become  hopeless,  but 
which,  on  the  other  hand,  may  be  solved  and  disappear. 
How  shall  he  go  on  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  when 
all  the  foundations  of  the  world  seem  to  have  sunk 
from  under  him  ?  Yet  how  shall  he  disclose  the 
dreadful  secret,  when  he  is  not  yet  quite  sure  whether 
his  mind  will  not  still  rally  from  its  terror  and  despair? 
He  must  in  honesty,  in  kindness,  give  some  warning, 
yet  how  much  ?  and  how  to  prevent  it  being  taken  for 
more  than  it  means?  There  are  counter- considera- 
tions, to  which  he  cannot  shut  his  eyes.  There  are 
friends  who  will  not  believe  his  warnings.  There  are 
watchful  enemies  who  are  on  the  look-out  for  proofs  of 
disingenuousness  and  bad  faith.  He  could  cut  through 
his  difficulties  at  once  by  making  the  plunge  in  obedi- 


xiv  No.  90  235 

ence  to  this  or  that  plausible  sign  or  train  of  reasoning, 
but  his  conscience  and  good  faith  will  not  let  him  take 
things  so  easily  ;  and  yet  he  knows  that  if  he  hangs 
on,  he  will  be  accused  by  and  by,  perhaps  speciously, 
of  having  been  dishonest  and  deceiving.  So  subtle, 
so  shifting,  so  impalpable  are  the  steps  by  which  a 
faith  is  disintegrated  ;  so  evanescent,  and  impossible 
to  follow,  the  shades  by  which  one  set  of  convictions 
pass  into  others  wholly  opposite ;  for  it  is  not  know- 
ledge and  intellect  alone  which  come  into  play,  but 
all  the  moral  tastes  and  habits  of  the  character,  its 
likings  and  dislikings,  its  weakness  and  its  strength,  its 
triumphs  and  its  vexations,  its  keenness  and  its  insen- 
sibilities, which  are  in  full  action,  while  the  intellect 
alone  seems  to  be  busy  with  its  problems.  A  picture 
has  been  given  us,  belonging  to  this  time,  of  the 
process,  by  a  great  master  of  human  nature,  and  a 
great  sufferer  under  the  process ;  it  is,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  attempt  ever  made  to  describe  it ;  but  it  is  not 
wholly  successful.  It  tells  us  much,  for  it  is  written 
with  touching  good  faith,  but  the  complete  effect  as  an 
intelligible  whole  is  wanting. 

"  In  the  spring  of  1839,"  we  read  in  the  Apologia, 
"  my  position  in  the  Anglican  Church  was  at  its  height. 
I  had  a  supreme  confidence  in  my  controversial  status, 
and  I  had  a  great  and  still  growing  success  in  recom- 
mending it  to  others."1  This,  then,  may  be  taken  as 
the  point  from  which,  in  the  writer's  own  estimate,  the 
change  is  to  be  traced.  He  refers  for  illustration  of 
his  state  of  mind  to  the  remarkable  article  on  the 
"  State  of  Religious  Parties,"  in  the  April  number  of  the 
British  Critic  for  1839,  which  he  has  since  republished 
under  the  title  of  "  Prospects  of  the  Anglican  Church."2 

1  Apologia,  p.  1 80.  2  Essays  Critical  and  Historical,  1871. 


236  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

"  I  have  looked  over  it  now,"  he  writes  in  1864,  "  for 
the  first  time  since  it  was  published  ;  and  have  been 
struck  by  it  for  this  reason  :  it  contains  the  last  words 
which  I  ever  spoke  as  an  Anglican  to  Anglicans.  .  .  . 
It  may  now  be  read  as  my  parting  address  and  vale- 
diction, made  to  my  friends.  I  little  knew  it  at  the 
time."  He  thus  describes  the  position  which  he  took 
in  the  article  referred  to  : — 

Conscious  as  I  was  that  my  opinions  in  religious  matters  were 
not  gained,  as  the  world  said,  from  Roman  sources,  but  were,  on  the 
contrary,  the  birth  of  my  own  mind  and  of  the  circumstances  in 
which  I  had  been  placed,  I  had  a  scorn  of  the  imputations  which 
were  heaped  upon  me.  It  was  true  that  I  held  a  large,  bold 
system  of  religion,  very  unlike  the  Protestantism  of  the  day,  but  it 
was  the  concentration  and  adjustment  of  the  statements  of  great 
Anglican  authorities,  and  I  had  as  much  right  to  do  so  as  the 
Evangelical  Party  had,  and  more  right  than  the  Liberal,  to  hold 
their  own  respective  doctrines.  As  I  spoke  on  occasion  of  Tract 
90,  I  claimed,  on  behalf  of  the  writer,  that  he  might  hold  in  the 
Anglican  Church  a  comprecation  of  the  Saints  with  Bramhall ;  and 
the  Mass,  all  but  Transubstantiation,  with  Andrewes ;  or  with 
Hooker  that  Transubstantiation  itself  is  not  a  point  for  Churches 
to  part  communion  upon ;  or  with  Hammond  that  a  General 
Council,  truly  such,  never  did,  never  shall  err  in  a  matter  of  faith ; 
or  with  Bull  that  man  lost  inward  grace  by  the  Fall ;  or  with 
Thorndike  that  penance  is  a  propitiation  for  post-baptismal  sin ;  or 
with  Pearson  that  the  all-powerful  name  of  Jesus  is  no  otherwise 
given  than  in  the  Catholic  Church.  "Two  can  play  at  that  game" 
was  often  in  my  mouth,  when  men  of  Protestant  sentiments  appealed 
to  the  Articles,  Homilies,  and  Reformers,  in  the  sense  that  if  they 
had  a  right  to  speak  loud  I  had  both  the  liberty  and  the  means  of 
giving  them  tit  for  tat.  I  thought  that  the  Anglican  Church  had 
been  tyrannised  over  by  a  Party,  and  I  aimed  at  bringing  into  effect 
the  promise  contained  in  the  motto  to  the  Lyra :  "  They  shall  know 
the  difference  now."  I  only  asked  to  be  allowed  to  show  them  the 
difference. 

I  have  said  already  (he  goes  on)  that  though  the  object  of  the 
movement  was  to  withstand  the  Liberalism  of  the  day,  I  found  and 


xiv  No.  go  237 

felt  that  this  could  not  be  done  by  negatives.  It  was  necessary  for 
me  to  have  a  positive  Church  theory  erected  on  a  definite  basis. 
This  took  me  to  the  great  Anglican  divines ;  and  then,  of  course,  I 
found  at  once  that  it  was  impossible  to  form  any  such  theory 
without  cutting  across  the  teaching  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  Thus 
came  in  the  Roman  controversy.  When  I  first  turned  myself  to  it 
I  had  neither  doubt  on  the  subject,  nor  suspicion  that  doubt 
would  ever  come  on  me.  It  was  in  this  state  of  mind  that  I  began 
to  read  up  Bellarmine  on  the  one  hand,  and  numberless  Anglican 
writers  on  the  other.1 

And  he  quotes  from  the  article  the  language  which 
he  used,  to  show  the  necessity  of  providing  some  clear 
and  strong  basis  for  religious  thought  in  view  of  the 
impending  conflict  of  principles,  religious  and  anti- 
religious,  "Catholic  and  Rationalist,"  which  to  far- 
seeing  men,  even  at  that  comparatively  early  time, 
seemed  inevitable  : — 

Then  indeed  will  be  the  stern  encounter,  when  two  real  and 
living  principles,  simple,  entire,  and  consistent,  one  in  the  Church, 
the  other  out  of  it,  at  length  rush  upon  each  other,  contending  not 
for  names  and  words,  a  half-view,  but  for  elementary  notions  and 
distinctive  moral  characters.  Men  will  not  keep  standing  in  that 
very  attitude  which  you  call  sound  Church- of -Englandism  or 
orthodox  Protestantism.  They  will  take  one  view  or  another,  but 
it  will  be  a  consistent  one  ...  it  will  be  real.  ...  Is  it  sensible, 
sober,  judicious,  to  be  so  very  angry  with  the  writers  of  the  day  who 
point  to  the  fact,  that  our  divines  of  the  seventeenth  century  have 
occupied  a  ground  which  is  the  true  and  intelligible  mean  between 
extremes  ?  .  .  .  Would  you  rather  have  your  sons  and  your 
daughters  members  of  the  Church  of  England  or  of  the  Church 
of  Rome  ?  z 

"  The  last  words  that  I  spoke  as  an  Anglican  to 
Anglicans," — so  he  describes  this  statement  of  his 

1  Apologia,  pp.    1 8 1,    182.      Comp.      426.      Condensed  in  the  Apologia,  pp. 
Letter  to  Jelf,  p.   18.  192-194. 

2  British  Critic,  April  1839,  pp.  419- 


238  THE  OXFORD  MO  VEMENT  CHAP. 

position  and  its  reasons ;  so  it  seems  to  him,  as  he 
looks  back.  And  yet  in  the  intimate  and  frank  dis- 
closures which  he  makes,  he  has  shown  us  much  that 
indicates  both  that  his  Anglicanism  lasted  much  longer 
and  that  his  Roman  sympathies  began  to  stir  much 
earlier.  This  only  shows  the  enormous  difficulties  of 
measuring  accurately  the  steps  of  a  transition  state. 
The  mind,  in  such  a  strain  of  buffeting,  is  never  in  one 
stay.  The  old  seems  impregnable,  yet  it  has  been 
undermined ;  the  new  is  indignantly  and  honestly 
repelled,  and  yet  leaves  behind  it  its  never-to-be- 
forgotten  and  unaccountable  spell.  The  story,  as  he 
tells  it,  goes  on,  how,  in  the  full  swing  and  confidence 
of  his  Anglicanism,  and  in  the  course  of  his  secure 
and  fearless  study  of  antiquity,  appearance  after 
appearance  presented  itself,  unexpected,  threatening, 
obstinate,  in  the  history  of  the  Early  Church,  by 
which  this  confidence  was  first  shaken  and  then  utterly 
broken  down  in  the  summer  of  1839.  And  two  years 
from  that  summer  of  1839  he  speaks  as  if  all  was 
over  :  "  From  the  end  of  1841  I  was  on  my  death-bed, 
as  regards  my  membership  with  the  Anglican  Church, 
though  at  the  time  I  became  aware  of  it  only  by 
degrees."  In  truth,  it  was  only  the  end  which  showed 
that  it  was  a  "death-bed."  He  had  not  yet  died  to 
allegiance  or  "to  hope,  then  or  for  some  time  after- 
wards." He  speaks  in  later  years  of  the  result,  and 
reads  what  was  then  in  the  light  of  what  followed. 
But  after  all  that  had  happened,  and  much,  of  course, 
disturbing  happened  in  1841,  he  was  a  long  way  off 
from  what  then  could  have  been  spoken  of  as  "a 
death-bed."  Deep  and  painful  misgivings  may  assail 
the  sincerest  faith  ;  they  are  not  fatal  signs  till  faith 
has  finally  given  way. 


xiv  No.  go  239 

What  is  true  is,  that  the  whole  state  of  religion, 
and  the  whole  aspect  of  Christianity  in  the  world, 
had  come  to  seem  to  him  portentously  strange  and 
anomalous.  No  theory  would  take  in  and  suit  all  the 
facts,  which  the  certainties  of  history  and  experience 
presented.  Neither  in  England,  nor  in  Rome,  and 
much  less  anywhere  else,  did  the  old,  to  which  all 
appealed,  agree  with  the  new  ;  it  might  agree  variously 
in  this  point  or  in  that,  in  others  there  were  con- 
trarieties which  it  was  vain  to  reconcile.  Facts  were 
against  the  English  claim  to  be  a  Catholic  Church — 
how  could  Catholicity  be  shut  up  in  one  island  ?  How 
could  England  assert  its  continuity  of  doctrine  ?  Facts 
were  against  the  Roman  claim  to  be  an  infallible,  and 
a  perfect,  and  the  whole  Church — how  could  that  be 
perfect  which  was  marked  in  the  face  of  day  with 
enormous  and  undeniable  corruptions  ?  How  could 
that  be  infallible  which  was  irreconcilable  with  ancient 
teaching  ?  How  could  that  be  the  whole  Church,  which, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  break  up  in  the  West,  ignored, 
as  if  it  had  no  existence,  the  ancient  and  uninterrupted 
Eastern  Church  ?  Theory  after  theory  came  up,  and 
was  tried,  and  was  found  wanting.  Each  had  much  to 
say  for  itself,  its  strong  points,  its  superiority  over  its 
rivals  in  dealing  with  the  difficulties  of  the  case,  its 
plausibilities  and  its  imaginative  attractions.  But  all 
had  their  tender  spot,  and  flinched  when  they  were 
touched  in  earnest.  In  the  confusions  and  sins  and 
divisions  of  the  last  fifteen  centuries,  profound  dis- 
organisation had  fastened  on  the  Western  Church. 
Christendom  was  not,  could  not  be  pretended  to  be, 
what  it  had  been  in  the  fourth  century ;  and  which- 
ever way  men  looked  the  reasons  were  not  hard  to 
see.  The  first  and  characteristic  feeling  of  the 


240  THE  OXFORD  MO  VEMENT  CHAP. 

movement,  one  which  Mr.  Newman  had  done  so 
much  to  deepen,  was  that  of  shame  and  humiliation 
at  the  disorder  at  home,  as  well  as  in  every  part  of  the 
Church.  It  was  not  in  Rome  only,  or  in  England 
only ;  it  was  everywhere.  What  had  been  peculiar 
to  Anglicanism  among  all  its  rivals,  was  that  it  had 
emphatically  and  without  reserve  confessed  it. 

With  this  view  of  the  dislocation  and  the  sins  of 
the  Church,  he  could  at  once  with  perfect  consistency 
recognise  the  shortcomings  of  the  English  branch  of 
the  Church,  and  yet  believe  and  maintain  that  it  was  a 
true  and  living  branch.  The  English  fragment  was 
not  what  it  should  be,  was  indeed  much  that  it  should 
not  be ;  the  same  could  be  said  of  the  Roman,  though 
in  different  respects.  This,  as  he  himself  reminds  us, 
was  no  new  thing  to  his  mind  when  the  unsettlement 
of  1839  began.  "  At  the  end  of  1835,  or  the  beginning 
of  1836,  I  had  the  whole  state  of  the  question  before 
me,  on  which,  to  my  mind,  the  decision  between  the 
Churches  depended."  It  did  not,  he  says,  depend  on 
the  claims  of  the  Pope,  as  centre  of  unity  ;  "it  turned 
on  the  Faith  of  the  Church  "  ;  "  there  was  a  contrariety 
of  claims  between  the  Roman  and  Anglican  religions"  ; 
and  up  to  1839,  with  the  full  weight  of  Roman  argu- 
ments recognised,  with  the  full  consciousness  of 
Anglican  disadvantages,  he  yet  spoke  clearly  for 
Anglicanism.  Even  when  misgivings  became  serious, 
the  balance  still  inclined  without  question  the  old  way. 
He  hardly  spoke  stronger  in  1834  than  he  did  in  1841, 
after  No.  90. 

And  now  (he  writes,  in  his  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Oxford x) 

1  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  (2g\\\  March  1841),  pp.  33-40.     Comp.  Letter 
tojelf,  pp.  7,  8. 


xiv  No.  90  241 

having  said,  I  trust,  as  much  as  your  Lordship  requires  on  the  subject 
of  Romanism,  I  will  add  a  few  words,  to  complete  my  explanation, 
in  acknowledgment  of  the  inestimable  privilege  I  feel  in  being  a 
member  of  that  Church  over  which  your  Lordship,  with  others,  pre- 
sides. Indeed,  did  I  not  feel  it  to  be  a  privilege  which  I  am  able 
to  seek  nowhere  else  on  earth,  why  should  I  be  at  this  moment 
writing  to  your  Lordship  ?  What  motive  have  I  for  an  unreserved 
and  joyful  submission  to  your  authority,  but  the  feeling  that  the 
Church  in  which  your  Lordship  rules  is  a  divinely-ordained  channel 
of  supernatural  grace  to  the  souls  of  her  members  ?  Why  should  I 
not  prefer  my  own  opinion,  and  my  own  way  of  acting,  to  that  of 
the  Bishop's,  except  that  I  know  full  well  that  in  matters  indifferent 
I  should  be  acting  lightly  towards  the  Spouse  of  Christ  and  the 
awful  Presence  which  dwells  in  her,  if  I  hesitated  a  moment  to  put 
your  Lordship's  will  before  my  own  ?  I  know  full  well  that  your 
Lordship's  kindness  to  me  personally  would  be  in  itself  quite  enough 
to  win  any  but  the  most  insensible  heart,  and,  did  a  clear  matter  of 
conscience  occur  in  which  I  felt  bound  to  act  for  myself,  my  feelings 
towards  your  Lordship  would  be  a  most  severe  trial  to  me,  inde- 
pendently of  the  higher  considerations  to  which  I  have  alluded ;  but 
I  trust  I  have  shown  my  dutifulness  to  you  prior  to  the  influence  of 
personal  motives ;  and  this  I  have  done  because  I  think  that  to 
belong  to  the  Catholic  Church  is  the  first  of  all  privileges  here 
below,  as  involving  in  it  heavenly  privileges,  and  because  I  consider 
the  Church  over  which  your  Lordship  presides  to  be  the  Catholic 
Church  in  this  country.  Surely  then  I  have  no  need  to  profess  in 
words,  I  will  not  say  my  attachment,  but  my  deep  reverence  towards 
the  Mother  of  Saints,  when  I  am  showing  it  in  action ;  yet  that 
words  may  not  be  altogether  wanting,  I  beg  to  lay  before  your  Lord- 
ship the  following  extract  from  a  defence  of  the  English  Church, 
which  I  wrote  against  a  Roman  controversialist  in  the  course  of  the 
last  year. 

"  The  Church  is  emphatically  a  living  body,  and  there  can  be  no 
greater  proof  of  a  particular  communion  being  part  of  the  Church 
than  the  appearance  in  it  of  a  continued  and  abiding  energy,  nor  a 
more  melancholy  proof  of  its  being  a  corpse  than  torpidity.  We 
say  an  energy  continued  and  abiding,  for  accident  will  cause  the 
activity  of  a  moment,  and  an  external  principle  give  the  semblance 
of  self  motion.  On  the  other  hand,  even  a  living  body  may  for  a 
while  be  asleep. 

R 


242  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 


"  It  concerns,  then,  those  who  deny  that  we  are  the  true  Church 
because  we  have  not  at  present  this  special  note,  intercommunion 
with  other  Christians,  to  show  cause  why  the  Roman  Church  in  the 
tenth  century  should  be  so  accounted,  with  profligates,  or  rather  the 
profligate  mothers  of  profligate  sons  for  her  supreme  rulers.  And 
still  notwithstanding  life  is  a  note  of  the  Church ;  she  alone  revives, 
even  if  she  declines ;  heretical  and  schismatical  bodies  cannot  keep 
life ;  they  gradually  became  cold,  stiff,  and  insensible. 

"  Now  if  there  ever  were  a  Church  on  whom  the  experiment  has 
been  tried,  whether  it  had  life  in  it  or  not,  the  English  is  that  one. 
For  three  centuries  it  has  endured  all  vicissitudes  of  fortune.  It 
has  endured  in  trouble  and  prosperity,  under  seduction  and  under 
oppression.  It  has  been  practised  upon  by  theorists,  browbeaten 
by  sophists,  intimidated  by  princes,  betrayed  by  false  sons,  laid 
waste  by  tyranny,  corrupted  by  wealth,  torn  by  schism,  and  perse- 
cuted by  fanaticism.  Revolutions  have  come  upon  it  sharply  and 
suddenly,  to  and  fro,  hot  and  cold,  as  if  to  try  what  it  was  made  of. 
It  has  been  a  sort  of  battlefield  on  which  opposite  principles  have 
been  tried.  No  opinion,  however  extreme  any  way,  but  may  be 
found,  as  the  Romanists  are  not  slow  to  reproach  us,  among  its 
Bishops  and  Divines.  Yet  what  has  been  its  career  upon  the 
whole?  Which  way  has  it  been  moving  through  300  years? 
Where  does  it  find  itself  at  the  end?  Lutherans  have  tended  to 
Rationalism ;  Calvinists  have  become  Socinians ;  but  what  has  it 
become?  As  far  as  its  Formularies  are  concerned,  it  may  be  said 
all  along  to  have  grown  towards  a  more  perfect  Catholicism  than 
that  with  which  it  started  at  the  time  of  its  estrangement ;  every  act, 
every  crisis  which  marks  its  course,  has  been  upward. 

"What  a  note  of  the  Church  is  the  mere  production  of  a  man 
like  Butler,  a  pregnant  fact  much  to  be  meditated  on  !  and  how 
strange  it  is,  if  it  be  as  it  seems  to  be,  that  the  real  influence  of  his 
work  is  only  just  now  beginning  !  and  who  can  prophesy  in  what  it 
will  end  ?  Thus  our  Divines  grow  with  centuries,  expanding  after 
their  death  in  the  minds  of  their  readers  into  more  and  more  exact 
Catholicism  as  years  roll  on. 


xiv  No.  90  243 

"  Look  across  the  Atlantic  to  the  daughter  Churches  of  England 
in  the  States  :  '  Shall  one  that  is  barren  bear  a  child  in  her  old  age  ? ' 
yet  'the  barren  hath  borne  seven.'  Schismatic  branches  put  out 
their  leaves  at  once,  in  an  expiring  effort ;  our  Church  has  waited 
three  centuries,  and  then  blossoms  like  Aaron's  rod,  budding  and 
blooming  and  yielding  fruit,  while  the  rest  are  dry.  And  lastly,  look 
at  the  present  position  of  the  Church  at  home ;  there,  too,  we  shall 
find  a  note  of  the  true  City  of  God,  the  Holy  Jerusalem.  She  is  in 
warfare  with  the  world,  as  the  Church  Militant  should  be ;  she  is 
rebuking  the  world,  she  is  hated,  she  is  pillaged  by  the  world. 

"  Much  might  be  said  on  this  subject  At  all  times,  since  Chris- 
tianity came  into  the  world,  an  open  contest  has  been  going  on 
between  religion  and  irreligion ;  and  the  true  Church,  of  course,  has 
ever  been  on  the  religious  side.  This,  then,  is  a  sure  test  in  every 
age  where  the  Christian  should  stand.  .  .  .  Now,  applying  this 
simple  criterion  to  the  public  Parties  of  this  DAY,  it  is  very  plain  that 
the  English  Church  is  at  present  on  God's  side,  and  therefore,  so  far, 
God's  Church ;  we  are  sorry  to  be  obliged  to  add  that  there  is  as 
little  doubt  on  which  side  English  Romanism  is. 

•  « 

"  As  for  the  English  Church,  surely  she  has  notes  enough,  '  the 
signs  of  an  Apostle  in  all  patience,  and  signs  and  wonders  and 
mighty  deeds.'  She  has  the  note  of  possession,  the  note  of  freedom 
from  party-titles ;  the  note  of  life,  a  tough  life  and  a  vigorous ;  she 
has  ancient  descent,  unbroken  continuance,  agreement  in  doctrine 
with  the  ancient  Church.  Those  of  Bellarmine's  Notes,  which  she 
certainly  has  not,  are  intercommunion  with  Christendom,  the  glory 
of  miracles,  and  the  prophetical  light,  but  the  question  is,  whether 
she  has  not  enough  of  Divinity  about  her  to  satisfy  her  sister 
Churches  on  their  own  principles,  that  she  is  one  body  with  them." 

This  may  be  sufficient  to  show  my  feelings  towards  my  Church, 
as  far  as  Statements  on  paper  can  show  them. 

How  earnestly,  how  sincerely  he  clung  to  the 
English  Church,  even  after  he  describes  himself  on 
his  "death-bed,"  no  one  can  doubt.  The  charm  of  the 
Apologia  is  the  perfect  candour  with  which  he  records 
fluctuations  which  to  many  are  inconceivable  and  un- 


244  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

intelligible,  the  different  and  sometimes  opposite  and 
irreconcilable  states  of  mind  through  which  he  passed, 
with  no  attempt  to  make  one  fit  into  another.  It  is 
clear,  from  what  he  tells  us,  that  his  words  in  1839 
were  not  his  last  words  as  an  Anglican  to  Anglicans. 
With  whatever  troubles  of  mind,  he  strove  to  be  a 
loyal  and  faithful  Anglican  long  after  that.  He  spoke 
as  an  Anglican.  He  fought  for  Anglicanism.  The 
theory,  as  he  says,  may  have  gone  by  the  board,  in  the 
intellectual  storms  raised  by  the  histories  of  the  Mono- 
physites  and  Donatists.  "  By  these  great  words  of  the 
ancient  father — Securus  judicat  or  bis  terr arum" -—fat 
theory  of  the  Via  Media  was  "  absolutely  pulverised." 
He  was  "sore,"  as  he  says  in  1840,  "about  the  great 
Anglican  divines,  as  if  they  had  taken  me  in,  and  made 
me  say  strong  things  against  Rome,  which  facts  did  not 
justify."1  Yes,  he  felt,  as  other  men  do  not  feel,  the 
weak  points  of  even  a  strong  argument,  the  exaggera- 
tions and  unfairness  of  controversialists  on  his  own 
side,  the  consciousness  that  you  cannot  have  things  in 
fact,  or  in  theory,  or  in  reasoning,  smoothly  and  exactly 
as  it  would  be  convenient,  and  as  you  would  like  to 
have  them.  But  his  conclusion,  on  the  whole,  was 
unshaken.  There  was  enough,  and  amply  enough,  in 
the  English  Church  to  bind  him  to  its  allegiance,  to 
satisfy  him  of  its  truth  and  its  life,  enough  in  the 
Roman  to  warn  him  away.  In  the  confusions  of 
Christendom,  in  the  strong  and  obstinate  differences 
of  schools  and  parties  in  the  English  Church,  he, 
living  in  days  of  inquiry  and  criticism,  claimed  to  take 
and  recommend  a  theological  position  on  many  con- 
troverted questions,  which  many  might  think  a  new 
one,  and  which  might  not  be  exactly  that  occupied  by 

1  Apologia,  pp.  212,  221. 


xiv  No.  90  245 

any  existing  school  or  party.1  "  We  are  all,"  he 
writes  to  an  intimate  friend  on  22d  April  1842,  a  year 
after  No.  90,  "  much  quieter  and  more  resigned  than 
we  were,  and  are  remarkably  desirous  of  building  up 
a  position,  and  proving  that  the  English  theory  is 
tenable,  or  rather  the  English  state  of  things.  If  the 
Bishops  would  leave  us  alone,  the  fever  would  subside." 

He  wanted,  when  all  other  parties  were  claiming  room 
for  their  speculations,  to  claim  room  for  his  own  prefer- 
ence for  ancient  doctrine.  He  wished  to  make  out  that 
no  branch  of  the  Church  had  authoritatively  committed 
itself  to  language  which  was  hopelessly  and  fatally  irre- 
concilable with  Christian  truth.  But  he  claimed  nothing 
but  what  he  could  maintain  to  be  fairly  within  the 
authorised  formularies  of  the  English  Church.  He 
courted  inquiry,  he  courted  argument.  If  his  claim 
seemed  a  new  one,  if  his  avowed  leaning  to  ancient 
and  Catholic  views  seemed  to  make  him  more  tolerant 
than  had  been  customary,  not  to  Roman  abuses,  but 
to  Roman  authoritative  language,  it  was  part  of  the 
more  accurate  and  the  more  temperate  and  charitable 
thought  of  our  day  compared  with  past  times.  It  was 
part  of  the  same  change  which  has  brought  Church 
opinions  from  the  unmitigated  Calvinism  of  the 
Lambeth  Articles  to  what  the  authorities  of  those 
days  would  have  denounced,  without  a  doubt,  as 
Arminianism.  Hooker  was  gravely  and  seriously 
accused  to  the  Council  for  saying  that  a  papist  could 
be  saved,  and  had  some  difficulty  to  clear  himself;  it 
was  as  natural  then  as  it  is  amazing  now.2 

But  with  this  sincere  loyalty  to  the  English  Church, 
as  he  believed  it  to  be,  there  was,  no  doubt,  in  the  back- 
ground the  haunting  and  disquieting  misgiving  that 

1  Letter  to  Jelf.  2   Walton's  Life,  i.  59  (Oxford  :  1845). 


246  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

the  attempt  to  connect  more  closely  the  modern 
Church  with  the  ancient,  and  this  widened  theology  in 
a  direction  which  had  been  hitherto  specially  and 
jealously  barred,  was  putting  the  English  Church  on 
its  trial.  Would  it  bear  it  ?  Would  it  respond  to  the 
call  to  rise  to  a  higher  and  wider  type  of  doctrine,  to  a 
higher  standard  of  life  ?  Would  it  justify  what  Mr. 
Newman  had  placed  in  the  forefront  among  the  notes 
of  the  true  Church,  the  note  of  Sanctity  ?  Would  the 
Via  Media  make  up  for  its  incompleteness  as  a  theory 
by  developing  into  reality  and  fruitfulness  of  actual 
results  ?  Would  the  Church  bear  to  be  told  of  its 
defaults  ?  Would  it  allow  to  the  maintainers  of 
Catholic  and  Anglican  principles  the  liberty  which 
others  claimed,  and  which  by  large  and  powerful  bodies 
of  opinion  was  denied  to  Anglicans  ?  Or  would  it  turn 
out  on  trial,  that  the  Via  Media  was  an  idea  without 
substance,  a  dialectical  fiction,  a  mere  theological 
expedient  for  getting  out  of  difficulties,  unrecognised, 
and  when  put  forward,  disowned  ?  Would  it  turn  out 
that  the  line  of  thought  and  teaching  which  connected 
the  modern  with  the  ancient  Church  was  but  the 
private  and  accidental  opinion  of  Hooker  and  Andrewes 
and  Bull  and  Wilson,  unauthorised  in  the  English 
Church,  uncongenial  to  its  spirit,  if  not  contradictory 
to  its  formularies?  It  is  only  just  to  Mr.  Newman  to 
say,  that  even  after  some  of  his  friends  were  frightened, 
he  long  continued  to  hope  for  the  best ;  but  undoubtedly, 
more  and  more,  his  belief  in  the  reality  of  the  English 
Church  was  undergoing  a  very  severe,  and  as  time 
went  on,  discouraging  testing. 

In  this  state  of  things  he  published  the  Tract 
No.  90.  It  was  occasioned  by  the  common  allegation, 
on  the  side  of  some  of  the  advanced  section  of  the 


xiv  No.  go  247 

Tractarians,  as  well  as  on  the  side  of  their  opponents, 
that  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  were  hopelessly  irrecon- 
cilable with  that  Catholic  teaching  which  Mr.  Newman 
had  defended  on  the  authority  of  our  great  divines,  but 
which  both  the  parties  above  mentioned  were  ready  to 
identify  with  the  teaching  of  the  Roman  Church.  The 
Tract  was  intended,  by  a  rigorous  examination  of  the 
language  of  the  Articles,  to  traverse  this  allegation. 
It  sought  to  show  that  all  that  was  clearly  and  un- 
doubtedly Catholic,  this  language  left  untouched  : l 
that  it  was  doubtful  whether  even  the  formal  definitions 
of  the  Council  of  Trent  were  directly  and  intentionally 
contradicted  ;  and  that  what  were  really  aimed  at  were 
the  abuses  and  perversions  of  a  great  popular  and 
authorised  system,  tyrannical  by  the  force  of  custom 
and  the  obstinate  refusal  of  any  real  reformation. 

It  is  often  urged  (says  the  writer),  and  sometimes  felt  and 
granted,  that  there  are  in  the  Articles  propositions  or  terms  incon- 
sistent with  the  Catholic  faith ;  or,  at  least,  if  persons  do  not  go 
so  far  as  to  feel  the  objection  as  of  force,  they  are  perplexed  how 
best  to  answer  it,  or  how  most  simply  to  explain  the  passages  on 
which  it  is  made  to  rest.  The  following  Tract  is  drawn  up  with  the 
view  of  showing  how  groundless  the  objection  is,  and  further,  of 
approximating  towards  the  argumentative  answer  to  it,  of  which 
most  men  have  an  implicit  apprehension,  though  they  may  have 
nothing  more.  That  there  are  real  difficulties  to  a  Catholic  Christian 
in  the  ecclesiastical  position  of  our  Church  at  this  day,  no  one  can 
deny;  but  the  statements  of  the  Articles  are  not  in  the  number,  and 
it  may  be  right  at  the  present  moment  to  insist  upon  this. 

When  met  by  the  objection  that  the  ideas  of  the 
framers  of  the  Articles  were  well  known,  and  that  it 
was  notorious  that  they  had  meant  to  put  an  insuper- 
able barrier  between  the  English  Church  and  every- 

1  No.  90,  p.  24. 


248  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

thing  that  savoured  of  Rome,  the  writer  replied  that 
the  actual  English  Church  received  the  Articles  not 
from  them  but  from  a  much  later  authority,  that  we 
are  bound  by  their  words  not  by- their  private  senti- 
ments either  as  theologians  or  ecclesiastical  politicians, 
and  that  in  fact  they  had  intended  the  Articles  to 
comprehend  a  great  body  of  their  countrymen,  who 
would  have  been  driven  away  by  any  extreme  and 
and -Catholic  declarations  even  against  Rome.  The 
temper  of  compromise  is  characteristic  of  the  English 
as  contrasted  with  the  foreign  Reformation.  It  is 
visible,  not  only  in  the  Articles,  but  in  the  polity  of 
the  English  Church,  which  clung  so  obstinately  to 
the  continuity  and  forms  of  the  ancient  hierarchical 
system.  It  is  visible  in  the  sacramental  offices  of 
the  Prayer  Book,  which  left  so  much  out  to  satisfy 
the  Protestants,  and  left  so  much  in  to  satisfy  the 
Catholics. 

The  Tract  went  through  the  Articles  in  detail, 
which  were  commonly  looked  upon  as  either  anti- 
Catholic  or  anti-Roman.  It  went  through  them  with 
a  dry  logical  way  of  interpretation,  such  as  a  pro- 
fessed theologian  might  use,  who  was  accustomed  to 
all  the  niceties  of  language  and  the  distinctions  of  the 
science.  It  was  the  way  in  which  they  would  be 
likely  to  be  examined  and  construed  by  a  purely  legal 
court.  The  effect  of  it,  doubtless,  was  like  that 
produced  on  ordinary  minds  by  the  refinements  of  a 
subtle  advocate,  or  by  the  judicial  interpretation  of  an 
Act  of  Parliament  which  the  judges  do  not  like  ;  and 
some  of  the  interpretations  undoubtedly  seemed  far- 
fetched and  artificial.  Yet  some  of  those  which  were 
pointed  to  at  the  time  as  flagrant  instances  of  extra- 
vagant misinterpretation  have  now  come  to  look 


xiv  No.  90  249 

different.  Nothing  could  exceed  the  scorn  poured  on 
the  interpretation  of  the  Twenty-second  Article,  that 
it  condemns  the  "Roman"  doctrine  of  Purgatory,  but 
not  all  doctrine  of  purgatory  as  a  place  of  gradual 
purification  beyond  death.  But  in  our  days  a  school 
very  far  removed  from  Mr.  Newman's  would  require 
and  would  claim  to  make  the  same  distinction.  And 
so  with  the  interpretation  of  the  "  Sacrifices  of 
Masses"  in  the  same  article.  It  was  the  fashion  in 
1841  to  see  in  this  the  condemnation  of  all  doctrine 
of  a  sacrifice  in  the  Eucharist ;  and  when  Mr.  New- 
man confined  the  phrase  to  the  gross  abuses  connected 
with  the  Mass,  this  was  treated  as  an  affront  to 
common  sense  and  honesty.  Since  then  we  have 
become  better  acquainted  with  the  language  of  the 
ancient  liturgies ;  and  no  instructed  theologian  could 
now  venture  to  treat  Mr.  Newman's  distinction  as 
idle.  There  was  in  fact  nothing  new  in  his  distinc- 
tions on  these  two  points.  They  had  already  been 
made  in  two  of  the  preceding  Tracts,  the  reprint  of 
Archbishop  Ussher  on  Prayers  for  the  Dead,  and  the 
Catena  on  the  Eucharistic  Sacrifice ;  and  in  both  cases 
the  distinctions  were  supported  by  a  great  mass  of 
Anglican  authority.1 

1  The    following     letter     of     Mr.  were  quite  new.     And  they  have  been 

James  Mozley  (8th  March  1841)  gives  so  accustomed  for  a  long  time  to  look 

the  first  impression  of  the  Tract  : — "  A  at    the  Articles  as  on  a  par  with  the 

new  Tract  has  come  out  this  week,  and  Creed,  that  they  think,  I  suppose,  that 

is  beginning  to  make  a  sensation.     It  if    they  subscribe    to    them    they  are 

is  on  the  Articles,  and  shows  that  they  bound  to  hold  whatever  doctrines  (not 

bear  a  highly  Catholic  meaning ;  and  positively  stated   in  them)  are    merely 

that    many   doctrines,    of    which    the  not  condemned.      So  if  they  will  have 

Romanist  are  corruptions,  may  be  held  a    Tractarian    sense,  they  are   thereby 

consistently  with    them.       This    is   no  all  Tractarians.    ...   It  is,  of  course, 

more  than  what  we  know  as  a  matter  highly  complimentary  to  the  whole  set 

of  history,   for    the    Articles  were  ex-  of  us  to  be  so  very  much  surprised  that 

pressly    worded    to    bring    in    Roman  we  should  think  what   we  held  to  be 

Catholics.      But  people  are  astonished  consistent  with  the  Articles  which  we 

and  confused  at  the  idea  now,  as  if  it  have    subscribed."     See    also  a  clever 


250  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

But  the  Tract  had  sufficient  novelty  about  it  to 
account  for  most  of  the  excitement  which  it  caused. 
Its  dryness  and  negative  curtness  were  provoking. 
It  was  not  a  positive  argument,  it  was  not  an  appeal 
to  authorities ;  it  was  a  paring  down  of  language, 
alleged  in  certain  portions  of  the  Articles  to  be  some- 
what loose,  to  its  barest  meaning ;  and  to  those  to 
whom  that  language  had  always  seemed  to  speak  with 
fulness  and  decision,  it  seemed  like  sapping  and  under- 
mining a  cherished  bulwark.  Then  it  seemed  to  ask 
for  more  liberty  than  the  writer  in  his  position  at  that 
time  needed ;  and  the  object  of  such  an  indefinite 
claim,  in  order  to  remove,  if  possible,  misunderstand- 
ings between  two  long -alienated  branches  of  the 
Western  Church,  was  one  to  excite  in  many  minds 
profound  horror  and  dismay.  That  it  maintained 
without  flinching  and  as  strongly  as  ever  the  position 
and  the  claim  of  the  English  Church  was  nothing  to 
the  purpose ;  the  admission,  both  that  Rome,  though 
wrong,  might  not  be  as  wrong  as  we  thought  her,  and 
that  the  language  of  the  Articles,  though  unquestion- 
ably condemnatory  of  much,  was  not  condemnatory  of 
as  much  as  people  thought,  and  might  possibly  be 
even  harmonised  with  Roman  authoritative  language, 
was  looked  upon  as  incompatible  with  loyalty  to  the 
English  Church. 

The  question  which  the  Tract  had  opened,  what 
the  Articles  meant  and  to  what  men  were  bound  by 
accepting  them,  was  a  most  legitimate  one  for  discus- 
sion ;  and  it  was  most  natural  also  that  any  one 
should  hesitate  to  answer  it  as  the  Tract  answered  it. 
But  it  was  distinctly  a  question  for  discussion.  It  was 

Whateleian    pamphlet,    "The   Contro-      Oxford  Tutors."     (How  and   Parsons, 
versy  between  Tract    No.   90   and  the      1841.) 


xiv  No.  90  251 

not  so  easy  for  any  of  the  parties  in  the  Church  to 
give  a  clear  and  consistent  answer,  as  that  the  matter 
ought  at  once  to  have  been  carried  out  of  the  region 
of  discussion.  The  Articles  were  the  Articles  of  a 
Church  which  had  seen  as  great  differences  as  those 
between  the  Church  of  Edward  VI  and  the  Church 
of  the  Restoration.  Take  them  broadly  as  the  con- 
demnation—  strong  but  loose  in  expression,  as,  for 
instance,  in  the  language  on  the  "  five,  commonly 
called  Sacraments" — of  a  powerful  and  well-known 
antagonist  system,  and  there  was  no  difficulty  about 
them.  But  take  them  as  scientific  and  accurate  and 
precise  enunciations  of  a  systematic  theology,  and 
difficulties  begin  at  once,  with  every  one  who  does  not 
hold  the  special  and  well-marked  doctrines  of  the  age 
when  the  German  and  Swiss  authorities  ruled  supreme. 
The  course  of  events  from  that  day  to  this  has  shown 
more  than  once,  in  surprising  and  even  startling 
examples,  how  much  those  who  at  the  time  least 
thought  that  they  needed  such  strict  construing  of  the 
language  of  the  Articles,  and  were  fierce  in  denouncing 
the  "  kind  of  interpretation "  said  to  be  claimed  in 
No.  90,  have  since  found  that  they  require  a  good  deal 
more  elasticity  of  reading  than  even  it  asked  for.  The 
"  whirligig  of  time  "  was  thought  to  have  brought  "  its 
revenges,"  when  Mr.  Newman,  who  had  called  for  the 
exercise  of  authority  against  Dr.  Hampden,  found  him- 
self, five  years  afterwards,  under  the  ban  of  the  same 
authority.  The  difference  between  Mr.  Newman's 
case  and  Dr.  Hampden's,  both  as  to  the  alleged  offence 
and  the  position  of  the  men,  was  considerable.  But 
the  "  whirligig  of  time  "  brought  about  even  stranger 
"revenges,"  when  not  only  Mr.  Gorham  and  Mr. 
H.  B.  Wilson  in  their  own  defence,  but  the  tribunals 


THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 


which  had  to  decide  on  their  cases,  carried  the 
strictness  of  reading  and  the  latitude  of  interpreta- 
tion, quite  as  far,  to  say  the  least,  as  anything  in 
No.  90. 

Unhappily  Tract  90  was  met  at  Oxford,  not  with 
argument,  but  with  panic  and  wrath.1  There  is  always 
a  sting  in  every  charge,  to  which  other  parts  of  it 
seem  subordinate.  No.  90  was  charged  of  course 
with  false  doctrine,  with  false  history,  and  with  false 
reasoning ;  but  the  emphatic  part  of  the  charge,  the 
short  and  easy  method  which  dispensed  from  the 
necessity  of  theological  examination  and  argument, 
was  that  it  was  dishonest  and  immoral.  Professors  of 
Divinity,  and  accomplished  scholars,  such  as  there 
were  in  Oxford,  might  very  well  have  considered  it 
an  occasion  to  dispute  both  the  general  principle 
of  the  Tract,  if  it  was  so  dangerous,  and  the  illus- 
trations, in  the  abundance  of  which  the  writer  had 
so  frankly  thrown  open  his  position  to  searching 
criticism.  It  was  a  crisis  in  which  much  might  have 
been  usefully  said,  if  there  had  been  any  one  to  say 
it ;  much  too,  to  make  any  one  feel,  if  he  was  com- 
petent to  feel,  that  he  had  a  good  deal  to  think  about 
in  his  own  position,  and  that  it  would  be  well  to 
ascertain  what  was  tenable  and  what  untenable  in  it. 
But  it  seemed  as  if  the  opportunity  must  not  be  lost 
for  striking  a  blow.  The  Tract  was  published  on 
27th  February.  On  the  8th  of  March  four  Senior 
Tutors,  one  of  whom  was  Mr.  H.  B.  Wilson,  of  St. 
John's,  and  another  Mr.  Tait,  of  Balliol,  addressed 
the  Editor  of  the  Tract,  charging  No.  90  with  sug- 
gesting and  opening  a  way,  by  which  men  might,  at 
least  in  the  case  of  Roman  views,  violate  their  solemn 

1  See  J.  B.  Mozley's  Letters,  I3th  March  1841. 


xiv  No.  90  253 

engagements  to  their  University.  On  the  I5th  of 
March,  the  Board  of  Heads  of  Houses,  refusing  to 
wait  for  Mr.  Newman's  defence,  which  was  known  to 
be  coming,  and  which  bears  date  I3th  March,  pub- 
lished their  judgment.  They  declared  that  in  No.  90 
"modes  of  interpretation  were  suggested,  and  have 
since  been  advocated  in  other  publications  purporting 
to  be  written  by  members  of  the  University,  by  which 
subscription  to  the  Articles  might  be  reconciled  with 
the  adoption  of  Roman  Catholic  error."  And  they 
announced  their  resolution,  "  That  modes  of  interpre- 
tation, such  as  are  suggested  in  the  said  Tract, 
evading  rather  than  explaining  the  sense  of  the 
Thirty -nine  Articles,  and  reconciling  subscription  to 
them  with  the  adoption  of  errors  which  they  are 
designed  to  counteract,  defeat  the  object,  and  are 
inconsistent  with  the  due  observance  of  the  above- 
mentioned  statutes." 

It  was  an  ungenerous  and  stupid  blunder,  such  as 
men  make,  when  they  think  or  are  told  that  "  some- 
thing must  be  done,"  and  do  not  know  what.  It  gave 
the  writer  an  opportunity,  of  which  he  took  full  advan- 
tage, of  showing  his  superiority  in  temper,  in  courtesy, 
and  in  reason,  to  those  who  had  not  so  much  con- 
demned as  insulted  him.  He  was  immediately  ready 
with  his  personal  expression  of  apology  and  regret, 
and  also  with  his  reassertion  in  more  developed  argu- 
ment of  the  principle  of  the  Tract ;  and  this  was 
followed  up  by  further  explanations  in  a  letter  to  the 
Bishop.  And  in  spite  of  the  invidious  position  in 
which  the  Board  had  tried  to  place  him,  not  merely  as 
an  unsound  divine,  but  as  a  dishonest  man  teaching 
others  to  palter  with  their  engagements,  the  crisis 
drew  forth  strong  support  and  sympathy  where  they 


254  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

were  not  perhaps  to  be  expected.  It  rallied  to  him,  at 
least  for  the  time,  some  of  the  friends  who  had  begun 
to  hold  aloof.  Mr.  Palmer,  of  Worcester,  Mr.  Per- 
ceval, Dr.  Hook,  with  reserves  according  to  each 
man's  point  of  view,  yet  came  forward  in  his  defence. 
The  Board  was  made  to  feel  that  they  had  been 
driven  by  violent  and  partisan  instigations  to  commit 
themselves  to  a  very  foolish  as  well  as  a  very  pas- 
sionate and  impotent  step ;'  that  they  had  by  very 
questionable  authority  simply  thrown  an  ill-sounding 
and  ill-mannered  word  at  an  argument  on  a  very 
difficult  question,  to  which  they  themselves  certainly 
were  not  prepared  with  a  clear  and  satisfactory 
answer ;  that  they  had  made  the  double  mistake  of 
declaring  war  against  a  formidable  antagonist,  and  of 
beginning  it  by  creating  the  impression  that  they  had 
treated  him  shabbily,  and  were  really  afraid  to  come 
to  close  quarters  with  him.  As  the  excitement  of 
hasty  counsels  subsided,  the  sense  of  this  began  to 
awake  in  some  of  them  ;  they  tried  to  represent  the 
off-hand  and  ambiguous  words  of  the  condemnation  as 
not  meaning  all  that  they  had  been  taken  to  mean. 
But  the  seed  of  bitterness  had  been  sown.  Very  little 
light  was  thrown,  in  the  strife  of  pamphlets  which 
ensued,  on  the  main  subject  dealt  with  in  No.  90,  the 
authority  and  interpretation  of  such  formularies  as  our 
Articles.  The  easier  and  more  tempting  and  very 
fertile  topic  of  debate  was  the  honesty  and  good  faith 
of  the  various  disputants.  Of  the  four  Tutors,  only 
one,  Mr.  H.  B.  Wilson,  published  an  explanation  of 
their  part  in  the  matter ;  it  was  a  clumsy,  ill-written 
and  laboured  pamphlet,  which  hardly  gave  promise  of 
the  intellectual  vigour  subsequently  displayed  by  Mr. 
Wilson,  when  he  appeared,  not  as  the  defender,  but 


xiv  No.  90  255 

the  assailant  of  received  opinions.  The  more  distin- 
guished of  the  combatants  were  Mr.  Ward  and  Mr.  R. 
Lowe.  Mr.  Ward,  with  his  usual  dialectical  skill,  not 
only  defended  the  Tract,  but  pushed  its  argument  yet 
further,  in  claiming  tolerance  for  doctrines  alleged  to 
be  Roman.  Mr.  Lowe,  not  troubling  himself  either 
with  theological  history  or  the  relation  of  other  parties 
in  the  Church  to  the  formularies,  threw  his  strength 
into  the  popular  and  plausible  topic  of  dishonesty,  and 
into  a  bitter  and  unqualified  invective  against  the  bad 
faith  and  immorality  manifested  in  the  teaching  of 
which  No.  90  was  the  outcome.  Dr.  Faussett,  as 
was  to  be  expected,  threw  himself  into  the  fray  with 
his  accustomed  zest  and  violence,  and  caused  some 
amusement  at  Oxford,  first  by  exposing  himself  to  the 
merciless  wit  of  a  reviewer  in  the  British  Critic,  and 
then  by  the  fright  into  which  he  was  thrown  by  a 
rumour  that  his  re-election  to  his  professorship  would 
be  endangered  by  Tractarian  votes.1  But  the  storm, 
at  Oxford  at  least,  seemed  to  die  out.  The  difficulty 
which  at  one  moment  threatened  of  a  strike  among 
some  of  the  college  Tutors  passed ;  and  things  went 
back  to  their  ordinary  course.  But  an  epoch  and  a 
new  point  of  departure  had  come  into  the  movement. 
Things  after  No.  90  were  never  the  same  as  to  lan- 
guage and  hopes  and  prospects  as  they  had  been 
before  ;  it  was  the  date  from  which  a  new  set  of  con- 
ditions in  men's  thoughts  and  attitude  had  to  be 
reckoned.  Each  side  felt  that  a  certain  liberty  had 
been  claimed  and  had  been  peremptorily  denied. 
And  this  was  more  than  confirmed  by  the  public 
language  of  the  greater  part  of  the  Bishops.  The 
charges  against  the  Tractarian  party  of  Romanising, 

1  J.  B.  Mozley's  Letters,  1 3th  July  1841. 


256  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  xiv 

and  of  flagrant  dishonesty,  long  urged  by  irresponsible 
opponents,  were  now  formally  adopted  by  the  Univer- 
sity authorities,  and  specially  directed  against  the 
foremost  man  of  the  party.  From  that  time  the  fate 
of  the  party  at  Oxford  was  determined.  It  must  break 
up.  Sooner  or  later,  there  must  be  a  secession  more 
or  less  discrediting  and  disabling  those  who  remained. 
And  so  the  break  up  came,  and  yet,  so  well  grounded 
and  so  congenial  to  the  English  Church  were  the 
leading  principles  of  the  movement,  that  not  even  that 
disastrous  and  apparently  hopeless  wreck  prevented 
them  from  again  asserting  their  claim  and  becoming 
once  more  active  and  powerful.  The  Via  Media, 
whether  or  not  logically  consistent,  was  a  thing  of 
genuine  English  growth,  and  was  at  least  a  working 
theory. 


CHAPTER  XV 

AFTER    NO.    QO 

THE  proceedings  about  No.  90  were  a  declaration  of 
war  on  the  part  of  the  Oxford  authorities  against  the 
Tractarian  party.  The  suspicions,  alarms,  antipathies, 
jealousies,  which  had  long  been  smouldering  among 
those  in  power,  had  at  last  taken  shape  in  a  definite 
act.  And  it  was  a  turning-point  in  the  history  of  the 
movement.  After  this  it  never  was  exactly  what  it 
had  been  hitherto.  It  had  been  so  far  a  movement 
within  the  English  Church,  for  its  elevation  and  reform 
indeed,  but  at  every  step  invoking  its  authority  with 
deep  respect,  acknowledging  allegiance  to  its  rulers 
in  unqualified  and  even  excessive  terms,  and  aiming 
loyally  to  make  it  in  reality  all  that  it  was  in  its 
devotional  language  and  its  classical  literature.  But 
after  what  passed  about  No.  90  a  change  came.  The 
party  came  under  an  official  ban  and  stigma.  The 
common  consequences  of  harsh  treatment  on  the 
tendencies  and  thought  of  a  party,  which  considers 
itself  unjustly  proscribed,  showed  themselves  more  and 
more.  Its  mind  was  divided ;  its  temper  was  exas- 
perated ;  while  the  attitude  of  the  governing  authorities 
hardened  more  into  determined  hostility.  From  the 
time  of  the  censure,  and  especially  after  the  events 

s 


258  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

connected  with  it, — the  contest  for  the  Poetry  Pro- 
fessorship and  the  renewed  Hampden  question, — it 
may  be  said  that  the  characteristic  tempers  of  the 
Corcyrean  sedition  were  reproduced  on  a  small  scale 
in  Oxford.1  The  scare  of  Popery,  not  without  founda- 
tion— the  reaction  against  it,  also  not  without  founda- 
tion— had  thrown  the  wisest  off  their  balance ;  and 
what  of  those  who  were  not  wise  ?  In  the  heat 
of  those  days  there  were  few  Tractarians  who  did 
not  think  Dr.  Wynter,  Dr.  Faussett,  and  Dr.  Symons 
heretics  in  theology  and  persecutors  in  temper,  despisers 
of  Christian  devotion  and  self-denial.  There  were  few 
of  the  party  of  the  Heads  who  did  not  think  every 
Tractarian  a  dishonest  and  perjured  traitor,  equivo- 
cating about  his  most  solemn  engagements,  the 
ignorant  slave  of  childish  superstitions  which  he  was 
conspiring  to  bring  back.  It  was  the  day  of  the 
violent  on  both  sides :  the  courtesies  of  life  were 
forgotten ;  men  were  afraid  of  being  weak  in  their 
censures,  their  dislike,  and  their  opposition ;  old 
friendships  were  broken  up,  and  men  believed  the 
worst  of  those  whom  a  few  years  back  they  had  loved 
and  honoured. 

It  is  not  agreeable  to  recall  these  long  extinct 
animosities,  but  they  are  part  of  the  history  of  that 
time,  and  affected  the  course  in  which  things  ran. 
And  it  is  easy  to  blame,  it  is  hard  to  do  justice  to,  the 
various  persons  and  parties  who  contributed  to  the 


1  T6X/MI  ctXifytffTos  dvdpla  0tX^rcupos  age ;    moderation  was  the  disguise   of 

tvofjdffOrj  .   .  .  -rb  8t  aCxppov  rou  &vdv-  unmanly   weakness  ;    to    know    every- 

Spov  Trp6ffx^a,  xal  rb  irpbs  &TTO.V  ^vverbv  thing  was  to  do  nothing  ;  frantic  energy 

eVt    irav   apybv  •  T&    8t   t/trX^crtH    6&  was  the  true  character  of  a  man  ;  the 

dyftpfe  pofw  rponrMj  .  .  .  nt  *  J*>  ]over  of  vioience  was  always  trusted, 

XaXfro^v  ru,rto  ae^o  Si  wriMyw  and  h|s  nt  suspected."-Jowett's 

a™,  ^oTTTos.-Thuc.  m.  82      "Reck- 
less  daring  was  held  to  be  loyal  cour- 


xv  AFTER  No.  90  259 

events  of  that  strange  and  confused  time.  All  was 
new,  and  unusual,  and  without  precedent  in  Oxford  ; 
a  powerful  and  enthusiastic  school  reviving  old  doc- 
trines in  a  way  to  make  them  seem  novelties,  and 
creating  a  wild  panic  from  a  quarter  where  it  was  the 
least  expected ;  the  terror  of  this  panic  acting  on 
authorities  not  in  the  least  prepared  for  such  a  trial 
of  their  sagacity,  patience,  and  skill,  driving  them 
to  unexampled  seventy,  and  to  a  desperate  effort 
to  expel  the  disturbing  innovators — among  them 
some  of  the  first  men  in  Oxford  in  character  and 
ability — from  their  places  in  the  University.1  In 
order  to  do  justice  on  each  side  at  this  distance  of 
time,  we  are  bound  to  make  allowance — both  for  the 
alarm  and  the  mistaken  violence  of  the  authorities, 
and  for  the  disaffection,  the  irritation,  the  strange 
methods  which  grew  up  in  the  worried  and  sus- 
pected party — for  the  difficulties  which  beset  both 
sides  in  the  conflict,  and  the  counter-influences  which 
drew  them  hither  and  thither.  But  the  facts  are  as  they 
are  ;  and  even  then  a  calmer  temper  was  possible  to 
those  who  willed  it ;  and  in  the  heat  of  the  strife  there 
were  men  among  the  authorities,  as  well  as  in  the 

1  One    of  the  strangest  features  in  inducement    to  join  Rome  and    break 

the  conflict  was  the  entire  misconcep-  the  ties  of  a  lifetime.      And  so  of  his 

tion  shown  of  what  Mr.  Newman  was  moral  qualities.      A  prominent  Evan- 

— the  blindness    to  his  real  character  gelical  leader,   Dr.   Close  of  Chelten- 

and   objects — the  imputation   to   him  ham,  afterwards  Dean  of  Carlisle,  at  a 

not  merely  of  grave  faults,  but  of  small  complimentary  dinner,  in  which  he  him - 

and  mean  ones.      His  critics  could  not  self  gloried  in  the  "foul,  personal  abuse 

rise  above  the  poorest  measure  of  his  to  which  he  had  been  subjected  in  his 

intellect    and    motives.       One    of  the  zeal  for  truth,"  proceeded  to  give  his 

ablest  of  them,  who  had  once  been  his  judgment  on   Mr.   Newman  :  "When 

friend,   in  a  farewell    letter  of  kindly  I  first  read   No.  90,    I   did  not  then 

remonstrance,  specifies  certain  Roman  know  the  author  ;  but  I  said  then,  and 

errors,  which  he  hopes  that  Mr.  New-  I  repeat  here,   not  -with  any  personal 

man  will  not  fall  into — adoring  images  reference  to  the  author,  that  I  should  be 

and  worshipping  saints — as  if  the  plea-  sorry  to  trust  the  author  of  that  Tract 

sure  and  privilege  of  worshipping  images  with  my  purse." — Report  of  Speech  in 

and  saints  were  to  Mr.   Newman  the  Cheltenham  Examiner,  ist  March  1843. 


260  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

unpopular  party,  who  kept  their  balance,  while  others 
lost  it. 

Undoubtedly  the  publication  of  No.  90  was  the 
occasion  of  the  aggravated  form  which  dissension  took, 
and  not  unnaturally.  Yet  it  was  anything  but  what 
it  was  taken  to  mean  by  the  authorities,  an  intentional 
move  in  favour  of  Rome.  It  was  intended  to  recon- 
cile a  large  and  growing  class  of  minds,  penetrated 
and  disgusted  with  the  ignorance  and  injustice  of  much 
of  the  current  controversial  assumptions  against  Rome, 
to  a  larger  and  more  defensible  view  of  the  position 
of  the  English  Church.  And  this  was  done  by  calling 
attention  to  that  which  was  not  now  for  the  first  time 
observed  —  to  the  loose  and  unguarded  mode  of 
speaking  visible  in  the  later  controversial  Articles, 
and  to  the  contrast  between  them  and  the  technical 
and  precise  theology  of  the  first  five  Articles. 
The  Articles  need  not  mean  all  which  they  were 
supposed  popularly  to  mean  against  what  was  Catholic 
in  Roman  doctrine.  This  was  urged  in  simple 
good  faith  ;  it  was  but  the  necessary  assumption  of 
all  who  held  with  the  Catholic  theology,  which  the 
Tractarians  all  along  maintained  that  they  had  a 
right  to  teach  ;  it  left  plenty  of  ground  of  difference 
with  unreformed  and  usurping  Rome.  And  we  know 
that  the  storm  which  No.  90  raised  took  the  writer  by 
surprise.  He  did  not  expect  that  he  should  give  such 
deep  offence.  But  if  he  thought  of  the  effect  on  one 
set  of  minds,  he  forgot  the  probable  effect  on  another  ; 
and  he  forgot,  or  under-estimated,  the  effect  not  only 
of  the  things  said,  but  of  the  way  in  which  they  were 
said.1  No.  90  was  a  surprise,  in  the  state  of  ordinary 


1  ov  yap  a.Tr6xpri  rb  fyfiv   &  Set  \tyeiv,   d\\'  dvdyKt)  KO.I  Tatsra  wj  Set 
—  Arist.  Rhet.  iii.  I. 


xv  AFTER  No.  go  261 

theological  knowledge  at  the  time.  It  was  a  strong 
thing  to  say  that  the  Articles  left  a  great  deal  of  formal 
Roman  language  untouched ;  but  to  work  this  out  in 
dry,  bald,  technical  logic,  on  the  face  of  it  narrow  in 
scope,  often  merely  ingenious,  was  even  a  greater 
stumbling-block.  It  was,  undoubtedly,  a  great  mis- 
calculation, such  as  men  of  keen  and  far-reaching 
genius  sometimes  make.  They  mistake  the  strength 
and  set  of  the  tide ;  they  imagine  that  minds  round 
them  are  going  as  fast  as  their  own.  We  can  see, 
looking  back,  that  such  an  interpretation  of  the 
Articles,  with  the  view  then  taken  of  them  in  Oxford 
as  the  theological  text-book,  and  in  the  condition  of 
men's  minds,  could  not  but  be  a  great  shock. 

And  what  seemed  to  give  a  sinister  significance  to 
No.  90  was  that,  as  has  been  said,  a  strong  current 
was  beginning  to  set  in  the  direction  of  Rome.  It 
was  not  yet  of  the  nature,  nor  of  the  force,  which 
was  imagined.  The  authorities  suspected  it  where 
it  was  not.  They  accepted  any  contemptible  bit  of 
gossip  collected  by  ignorance  or  ill-nature  as  a  proof 
of  it.  The  constitutional  frankness  of  Englishmen 
in  finding  fault  with  what  is  their  own — disgust  at 
pompous  glorification  —  scepticism  as  to  our  insular 
claims  against  all  the  rest  of  Christendom  to  be  exactly 
right,  to  be  alone  "pure  and  apostolic"  ;  real  increase 
and  enlargement  of  knowledge,  theological  and  histori- 
cal ;  criticism  on  portions  of  our  Reformation  history  ; 
admiration  for  characters  in  mediaeval  times  ;  eager- 
ness, over-generous  it  might  be,  to  admit  and  repair 
wrong  to  an  opponent  unjustly  accused ;  all  were 
set  down  together  with  other  more  unequivocal  signs 
as  "  leanings  to  Rome."  It  was  clear  that  there  was 
a  current  setting  towards  Rome  ;  but  it  was  as  clear 


262  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

that  there  was  a  much  stronger  current  in  the  party 
as  a  whole,  setting  in  the  opposite  direction.  To 
those  who  chose  to  see  and  to  distinguish,  the  love, 
the  passionate  loyalty  of  the  bulk  of  the  Tractarians 
to  the  English  Church  was  as  evident  and  unquestion- 
able as  any  public  fact  could  be.  At  this  time  there 
was  no  reason  to  call  in  question  the  strong  assurances 
given  by  the  writer  of  No.  90  himself  of  his  yet  un- 
shaken faith  in  the  English  Church.  But  all  these 
important  features  of  the  movement — witnessing,  in- 
deed, to  deep  searchings  of  heart,  but  to  a  genuine 
desire  to  serve  the  English  Church — were  overlooked 
in  the  one  overwhelming  fear  which  had  taken 
possession  of  the  authorities.  Alarming  symptoms  of 
a  disposition  to  acknowledge  and  even  exaggerate  the 
claims  and  the  attractions  of  the  Roman  system  were 
indeed  apparent.  No  doubt  there  were  reasons  for 
disquiet  and  anxiety.  But  the  test  of  manliness  and 
wisdom,  in  the  face  of  such  reasons,  is  how  men  measure 
their  proportion  and  how  they  meet  the  danger. 

The  Heads  saw  a  real  danger  before  them  ;  but 
they  met  it  in  a  wrong  and  unworthy  way.  They 
committed  two  great  errors.  In  the  first  place,  like 
the  Jesuits  in  their  quarrel  with  Portroyal  and  the 
Jansenists,  they  entirely  failed  to  recognise  the  moral 
elevation  and  religious  purpose  of  the  men  whom 
they  opposed.  There  was  that  before  them  which  it 
was  to  their  deep  discredit  that  they  did  not  see. 
The  movement,  whatever  else  it  was,  or  whatever 
else  it  became,  was  in  its  first  stages  a  movement 
for  deeper  religion,  for  a  more  real  and  earnest  self- 
discipline,  for  a  loftier  morality,  for  more  genuine  self- 
devotion  to  a  serious  life,  than  had  ever  been  seen 
in  Oxford.  It  was  an  honest  attempt  to  raise  Oxford 


xv  AFTER  No.  go  263 

life,  which  by  all  evidence  needed  raising,  to  something 
more  laborious  and  something  more  religious,  to  some- 
thing more  worthy  of  the  great  Christian  foundations 
of  Oxford  than  the  rivalry  of  colleges  and  of  the 
schools,  the  mere  literary  atmosphere  of  the  tutor's 
lecture -room,  and  the  easy  and  gentlemanly  and 
somewhat  idle  fellowship  of  the  common-rooms.  It 
was  the  effort  of  men  who  had  all  the  love  of  scholar- 
ship, and  the  feeling  for  it  of  the  Oxford  of  their  day, 
to  add  to  this  the  habits  of  Christian  students  and  the 
pursuit  of  Christian  learning.  If  all  this  was  danger- 
ous and  uncongenial  to  Oxford,  so  much  the  worse  for 
Oxford,  with  its  great  opportunities  and  great  pro- 
fessions— Dominus  illuminatio  mea.  But  certainly  this 
mark  of  moral  purpose  and  moral  force  was  so  plain  in 
the  movement  that  the  rulers  of  Oxford  had  no  right 
to  mistake  it.  When  the  names  come  back  to  our  minds 
of  those  who  led  and  most  represented  the  Tractarians, 
it  must  be  a  matter  of  surprise  to  any  man  who  has 
not  almost  parted  with  the  idea  of  Christian  goodness, 
that  this  feature  of  the  movement  could  escape  or 
fail  to  impress  those  who  had  known  well  all  their 
lives  long  what  these  leaders  were.  But  amid  the 
clamour  and  the  tell-tale  gossip,  and,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, the  folly  round  them,  they  missed  it.  Perhaps 
they  were  bewildered.  But  they  must  have  the  blame, 
the  heavy  blame,  which  belongs  to  all  those  who,  when 
good  is  before  them,  do  not  recognise  it  according  to 
its  due  measure. 

In  the  next  place,  the  authorities  attacked  and 
condemned  the  Tractarian  teaching  at  once  violently 
and  ignorantly  ;  and  in  them  ignorance  of  the  ground 
on  which  the  battle  was  fought  was  hardly  pardon- 
able. Doubtless  the  Tractarian  language  was  in  many 


264  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

respects  novel  and  strange.  But  Oxford  was  not  only 
a  city  of  libraries,  it  was  the  home  of  what  was  especi- 
ally accounted  Church  theology ;  and  the  Tractarian 
teaching,  in  its  foundation  and  main  outlines,  had 
little  but  what  ought  to  have  been  perfectly  familiar 
to  any  one  who  chose  to  take  the  trouble  to  study  the 
great  Church  of  England  writers.  To  one  who,  like 
Dr.  Routh  of  Magdalen,  had  gone  below  the  surface  and 
was  acquainted  with  the  questions  debated  by  those 
divines,  there  was  nothing  startling  in  what  so  alarmed 
his  brethren,  whether  he  agreed  with  it  or  not ;  and  to 
him  the  indiscriminate  charge  of  Popery  meant  nothing. 
But  Dr.  Routh  stood  alone  among  his  brother  Heads 
in  his  knowledge  of  what  English  theology  was.  To 
most  of  them  it  was  an  unexplored  and  misty  region ; 
some  of  the  ablest,  under  the  influence  of  Dr.  Whately's 
vigorous  and  scornful  discipline,  had  learned  to  slight 
it.  But  there  it  was.  Whether  it  was  read  or  not,  its 
great  names  were  pronounced  with  honour,  and  quoted 
on  occasion.  From  Hooker  to  Van  Mildert,  there  was 
an  unbroken  thread  of  common  principles  giving  con- 
tinuity to  a  line  of  Church  teachers.  The  Puritan  line 
of  doctrine,  though  it  could  claim  much  sanction  among 
the  divines  of  the  Reformation — the  Latitudinarian 
idea,  though  it  had  the  countenance  of  famous  names 
and  powerful  intellects — never  could  aspire  to  the 
special  title  of  Church  theology.  And  the  teaching 
which  had  that  name,  both  in  praise,  and  often  in 
dispraise,  as  technical,  scholastic,  unspiritual,  transcend- 
ental, nay,  even  Popish,  countenanced  the  Tractarians. 
They  were  sneered  at  for  their  ponderous  Catena  of 
authorities  ;  but  on  the  ground  on  which  this  debate 
raged,  the  appeal  was  a  pertinent  and  solid  one.  Yet 
to  High  Church  Oxford  and  its  rulers,  all  this  was 


xv  AFTER  No.  90  265 

strange  doctrine.  Proof  and  quotation  might  lie 
before  their  eyes,  but  their  minds  still  ran  in  one 
groove  and  they  could  not  realise  what  they  saw. 
The  words  meant  no  harm  in  the  venerable  folio  ;  they 
meant  perilous  heresy  in  the  modern  Tract.  When 
the  authorities  had  to  judge  of  the  questions  raised  by 
the  movement,  they  were  unprovided  with  the  adequate 
knowledge  ;  and  this  was  knowledge  which  they  ought 
to  have  possessed  for  its  own  sake,  as  doctors  of  the 
Theological  Faculty  of  the  University. 

And  it  was  not  only  for  their  want  of  learning, 
manifest  all  through  the  controversy,  that  they  were 
to  blame.  Their  most  telling  charge  against  the 
Tractarians,  which  was  embodied  in  the  censure  of 
No.  90,  was  the  charge  of  dishonesty.  The  charge 
is  a  very  handy  one  against  opponents,  and  it  may 
rest  on  good  grounds ;  but  those  who  think  right  to 
make  it  ought,  both  as  a  matter  of  policy  and  as  a 
matter  of  conscience,  to  be  quite  assured  of  their  own 
position.  The  Articles  are  a  public,  common  docu- 
ment. It  is  the  differing  interpretations  of  a  common 
document  which  create  political  and  religious  parties  ; 
and  only  shallowness  and  prejudice  will  impute  to  an 
opponent  dishonesty  without  strong  and  clear  reason. 
Mr.  Newman's  interpretation  in  No.  90, — new,  not  in 
claiming  for  the  Articles  a  Catholic  meaning,  but  in 
limiting,  though  it  does  not  deny,  their  Anti- Roman 
scope,  was  fairly  open  to  criticism.  It  might  be  taken 
as  a  challenge,  and  as  a  challenge  might  have  to  be 
met.  But  it  would  have  been  both  fair  and  wise  in 
the  Heads,  before  proceeding  to  unusual  extremities, 
to  have  shown  that  they  had  fully  considered  their 
own  theological  doctrines  in  relation  to  the  Church 
formularies.  They  all  had  obvious  difficulties,  and  in 


266  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

some  cases  formidable  ones.  The  majority  of  them 
were  what  would  have  been  called  in  older  contro- 
versial days  frank  Arminians,  shutting  their  eyes  by 
force  of  custom  to  the  look  of  some  of  the  Articles, 
which,  if  of  Lutheran  origin,  had  been  claimed  from  the 
first  by  Calvinists.  The  Evangelicals  had  long  con- 
fessed difficulties,  at  least,  in  the  Baptismal  Service 
and  the  Visitation  Office ;  while  the  men  most  loud 
in  denunciation  of  dishonesty  were  the  divines  of 
Whately's  school,  who  had  been  undermining  the 
authority  of  all  creeds  and  articles,  and  had  never 
been  tired  of  proclaiming  their  dislike  of  that  solemn 
Athanasian  Creed  to  which  Prayer  Book  and  Articles 
alike  bound  them.  Men  with  these  difficulties  daily 
before  them  had  no  right  to  ignore  them.  Doubtless 
they  all  had  their  explanations  which  they  bona  fide 
believed  in.  But  what  was  there  that  excluded  Mr. 
Newman  from  the  claim  to  bona  fides  ?  He  had 
attacked  no  foundation  of  Christianity ;  he  had  denied 
or  doubted  no  article  of  the  Creed.  He  gave  his 
explanations,  certainly  not  more  far-fetched  than  those 
of  some  of  his  judges.  In  a  Church  divided  by  many 
conflicting  views,  and  therefore  bound  to  all  possible 
tolerance,  he  had  adopted  one  view  which  certainly  was 
unpopular  and  perhaps  was  dangerous.  He  might  be 
confuted,  he  might  be  accused,  or,  if  so  be,  convicted 
of  error,  perhaps  of  heresy.  But  nothing  of  this  kind 
was  attempted.  The  incompatibility  of  his  view,  not 
merely  with  the  Articles,  but  with  morality  in  signing 
what  all,  of  whatever  party,  had  signed,  was  asserted 
in  a  censure,  which  evaded  the  responsibility  of  speci- 
fying the  point  which  it  condemned.  The  alarm  of 
treachery  and  conspiracy  is  one  of  the  most  maddening 
of  human  impulses.  The  Heads  of  Houses,  instead 


xv  AFTER  No.  90  267 

of  moderating  and  sobering  it,  with  the  authority  of 
instructed  and  sagacious  rulers,  blew  it  into  a  flame. 
And  they  acted  in  such  a  hurry  that  all  sense  of 
proportion  and  dignity  was  lost.  They  peremptorily 
refused  to  wait  even  a  few  days,  as  the  writer 
requested,  and  as  was  due  to  his  character,  for 
explanation.  They  dared  not  risk  an  appeal  to  the 
University  at  large.  They  dared  not  abide  the  effect 
of  discussion  on  the  blow  which  they  were  urged  to 
strike.  They  chose,  that  they  might  strike  without 
delay,  the  inexpressibly  childish  step  of  sticking  up  at 
the  Schools'  gates,  and  at  College  butteries,  without 
trial,  or  conviction,  or  sentence,  a  notice  declaring  that 
certain  modes  of  signing  the  Articles  suggested  in  a 
certain  Tract  were  dishonest.  It  was,  they  said,  to 
protect  undergraduates ;  as  if  undergraduates  would 
be  affected  by  a  vague  assertion  on  a  difficult  sub- 
ject, about  which  nothing  was  more  certain  than  that 
those  who  issued  the  notice  were  not  agreed  among 
themselves. 

The  men  who  acted  thus  were  good  and  conscien- 
tious men,  who  thought  themselves  in  the  presence  of 
a  great  danger.  It  is  only  fair  to  remember  this.  But 
it  is  also  impossible  to  be  fair  to  the  party  of  the  move- 
ment without  remembering  this  deplorable  failure  in 
consistency,  in  justice,  in  temper,  in  charity,  on  the 
part  of  those  in  power  in  the  University.  The  drift 
towards  Rome  had  not  yet  become  an  unmanageable 
rush  ;  and  though  there  were  cases  in  which  nothing 
could  have  stopped  its  course,  there  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  that  generous  and  equitable  dealing,  a  more  con- 
siderate reasonableness,  a  larger  and  more  comprehen- 
sive judgment  of  facts,  and  a  more  patient  waiting  for 
strong  first  impressions  to  justify  and  verify  themselves, 


268  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

would  have  averted  much  mischief.  There  was 
much  that  was  to  be  regretted  from  this  time  forward 
in  the  temper  and  spirit  of  the  movement  party.  But 
that  which  nourished  and  strengthened  impatience, 
exaggeration  of  language  and  views,  scorn  of  things  as 
they  were,  intolerance  of  everything  moderate,  both  in 
men  and  in  words,  was  the  consciousness  with  which 
every  man  got  up  in  the  morning  and  passed  the  day, 
of  the  bitter  hostility  of  those  foremost  in  place  in 
Oxford — of  their  incompetence  to  judge  fairly — of  their 
incapacity  to  apprehend  what  was  high  and  earnest  in 
those  whom  they  condemned — of  the  impossibility  of 
getting  them  to  imagine  that  Tractarians  could  be  any- 
thing but  fools  or  traitors — of  their  hopeless  blindness 
to  any  fact  or  any  teaching  to  which  they  were  not 
accustomed.  If  the  authorities  could  only  have  stopped 
to  consider  whether  after  all  they  were  not  dealing  with 
real  thought  and  real  wish  to  do  right,  they  might  after 
all  have  disliked  the  movement,  but  they  would  have 
seen  that  which  would  have  kept  them  from  violence. 
They  would  not  listen,  they  would  not  inquire,  they 
would  not  consider.  Could  such  ignorance,  could  such 
wrong  possibly  be  without  mischievous  influence  on 
those  who  were  the  victims  of  it,  much  more  on  friends 
and  disciples  who  knew  and  loved  them  ?  The  Tract- 
arians had  been  preaching  that  the  Church  of  England, 
with  all  its  Protestant  feeling  and  all  its  Protestant  acts 
and  history,  was  yet,  as  it  professed  to  be,  part  and 
parcel  of  the  great  historic  Catholic  Church,  which  had 
framed  the  Creeds,  which  had  continued  the  Sacraments, 
which  had  preached  and  taught  out  of  the  Bible,  which 
had  given  us  our  immemorial  prayers.  They  had 
spared  no  pains  to  make  out  this  great  commonplace 
from  history  and  theology :  nor  had  they  spared 


xv  AFTER  No.  go  269 

pains,  while  insisting  on  this  dominant  feature  in 
the  English  Church,  to  draw  strongly  and  broadly  the 
lines  which  distinguished  it  from  Rome.  Was  it 
wonderful,  when  all  guarding  and  explanatory  limita- 
tions were  contemptuously  tossed  aside  by  "all-daring 
ignorance,"  and  all  was  lumped  together  in  the  indis- 
criminate charge  of  "  Romanising,"  that  there  should 
have  been  some  to  take  the  authorities  at  their  word  ? 
Was  it  wonderful  when  men  were  told  that  the  Church 
of  England  was  no  place  for  them,  that  they  were 
breaking  their  vows  and  violating  solemn  engagements 
by  acting  as  its  ministers,  and  that  in  order  to  preserve 
the  respect  of  honest  men  they  should  leave  it — that 
the  question  of  change,  far  off  as  it  had  once  seemed, 
came  within  "measurable  distance."  The  generation 
to  which  they  belonged  had  been  brought  up  with 
strong  exhortations  to  be  real,  and  to  hate  shams ;  and 
now  the  question  was  forced  on  them  whether  it  was 
not  a  sham  for  the  English  Church  to  call  itself 
Catholic  ;  whether  a  body  of  teaching  which  was  de- 
nounced by  its  authorities,  however  it  might  look  on 
paper  and  be  defended  by  learning,  could  be  more  than 
a  plausible  literary  hypothesis  in  contrast  to  the  great 
working  system  of  which  the  head  was  Rome.  When 
we  consider  the  singular  and  anomalous  position 
on  any  theory,  including  the  Roman,  of  the  English 
Church  ;  with  what  great  differences  its  various  features 
and  elements  have  been  prominent  at  different  times  ; 
how  largely  its  history  has  been  marked  by  contra- 
dictory facts  and  appearances ;  and  how  hard  it  is  for 
any  one  to  keep  all,  according  to  their  real  importance, 
simultaneously  in  view  ;  when  we  remember  also  what 
are  the  temptations  of  human  nature  in  great  collisions 
of  religious  belief,  the  excitement  and  passion  of  the 


270  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  xv 

time,  the  mixed  character  of  all  religious  zeal,  the 
natural  inevitable  anger  which  accompanies  it  when 
resisted,  the  fervour  which  welcomes  self-sacrifice  for 
the  truth  ;  and  when  we  think  of  all  this  kept  aglow 
by  the  continuous  provocation  of  unfair  and  harsh 
dealing  from  persons  who  were  scarcely  entitled  to  be 
severe  judges  ;  the  wonder  is,  human  nature  being 
what  it  is,  not  that  so  many  went,  but  that  so  many 
stayed. 


CHAPTER   XVI 

THE    THREE    DEFEATS  I 
ISAAC    WILLIAMS,    MACMULLEN,    PUSEY 

THE  year  1841,  though  it* had  begun  in  storm,  and 
though  signs  were  not  wanting  of  further  disturbance, 
was  at  Oxford,  outwardly  at  least,  a  peaceable  one. 
A  great  change  had  happened  ;  but,  when  the  first 
burst  of  excitement  was  over,  men  settled  down  to 
their  usual  work,  their  lectures,  or  their  reading,  or 
their  parishes,  and  by  Easter  things  seemed  to  go  on 
as  before.  The  ordinary  habits  of  University  life  re- 
sumed their  course  with  a  curious  quietness.  There 
was,  no  doubt,  much  trouble  brooding  underneath. 
Mr.  Ward  and  others  continued  a  war  of  pamphlets  ; 
and  in  June  Mr.  Ward  was  dismissed  from  his  Mathe- 
matical Lectureship  at  Balliol.  But  faith  in  the  great 
leader  was  still  strong.  No.  90,  if  it  had  shocked  or 
disquieted  some,  had  elicited  equally  remarkable  ex- 
pressions of  confidence  and  sympathy  from  others  who 
might  have  been,  at  least,  silent.  The  events  of  the 
spring  had  made  men  conscious  of  what  their  leader 
was,  and  called  forth  warm  and  enthusiastic  affection. 
It  was  not  in  vain  that,  whatever  might  be  thought  of 
the  wisdom  or  the  reasonings  of  No.  90,  he  had  shown 
the  height  of  his  character  and  the  purity  and  greatness 


272  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

of  his  religious  purpose  ;  and  that  being  what  he  was, 
in  the  eyes  of  all  Oxford,  he  had  been  treated  with 
contumely,  and  had  borne  it  with  patience  and  loyal 
submission.  There  were  keen  observers,  to  whom 
that  patience  told  of  future  dangers ;  they  would  have 
liked  him  to  show  more  fight.  But  he  gave  no  signs 
of  defeat,  nor,  outwardly,  of  disquiet ;  he  forbore  to 
retaliate  at  Oxford :  and  the  sermons  at  St.  Mary's 
continued,  penetrating  and  searching  as  ever,  perhaps 
with  something  more  pathetic  and  anxious  in  their 
undertone  than  before. 

But  if  he  forbore  at  Oxford,  he  did  not  let  things 
pass  outside.  Sir  Robert 'Peel,  in  opening  a  reading- 
room  at  Tamworth,  had  spoken  loosely,  in  the  con- 
ventional and  pompous  way  then  fashionable,  of  the 
all -sufficing  and  exclusive  blessings  of  knowledge. 
While  Mr.  Newman  was  correcting  the  proofs  of  No. 
90,  he  was  also  writing  to  the  Times  the  famous 
letters  of  Catholicus ;  a  warning  to  eminent  public 
men  of  the  danger  of  declaiming  on  popular  common- 
places without  due  examination  of  their  worth.  But 
all  seemed  quiet.  "In  the  summer  of  1841,"  we  read 
in  the  Apologia,  "  I  found  myself  at  Littlemore  without 
any  harass  or  anxiety  on  my  mind.  I  had  determined 
to  put  aside  all  controversy,  and  set  myself  down  to 
my  translation  of  St.  Athanasius."  Outside  of  Oxford 
there  was  a  gathering  of  friends  in  the  summer  at  the 
consecration  of  one  of  Mr.  Keble's  district  churches, 
Ampfield — an  occasion  less  common  and  more  notice- 
able then  than  now.  Again,  what  was  a  new  thought 
then,  a  little  band  of  young  Oxford  men,  ten  or  twelve, 
taxed  themselves  to  build  a  new  church,  which  was 
ultimately  placed  at  Bussage,  in  Mr.  Thomas  Keble's 
parish.  One  of  Mr.  Keble's  curates,  Mr.  Peter  Young, 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  273 

had  been  refused  Priest's  orders  by  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  for  alleged  unsoimdness  on  the  doctrine 
of  the  Eucharist.  Mr.  Selwyn,  not  without  misgivings 
on  the  part  of  the  Whig  powers,  had  been  appointed 
Bishop  of  New  Zealand.  Dr.  Arnold  had  been  ap- 
pointed to  the  Chair  of  Modern  History  at  Oxford. 
In  the  course  of  the  year  there  passed  away  one  who 
had  had  a  very  real  though  unacknowledged  influence 
on  much  that  had  happened — Mr.  Blanco  White. 
And  at  the  end  of  the  year,  29th  October,  Mr.  Keble 
gave  his  last  lecture  on  Poetry,  and  finished  a  course 
the  most  original  and  memorable  ever  delivered  from 
his  chair. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  year  two  incidents,  besides 
some  roughly -worded  Episcopal  charges,  disturbed 
this  quiet.  They  were  only  indirectly  connected  with 
theological  controversy  at  Oxford  ;  but  they  had  great 
ultimate  influence  on  it,  and  they  helped  to  marshal 
parties  and  consolidate  animosities.  One  was  the 
beginning  of  the  contest  for  the  Poetry  Professorship 
which  Mr.  Keble  had  vacated.  There  was  no  one  of 
equal  eminence  to  succeed  him ;  but  there  was  in 
Oxford  a  man  of  undoubted  poetical  genius,  of  refined 
taste  and  subtle  thought,  though  of  unequal  power, 
who  had  devoted  his  gifts  to  the  same  great  purpose 
for  which  Mr.  Keble  had  written  the  Christian  Year. 
No  one  who  has  looked  into  the  Baptistery,  whatever 
his  feeling  towards  the  writer,  can  doubt  whether  Mr. 
Isaac  Williams  was  a  poet  and  knew  what  poetry 
meant.  He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Mr.  Keble  and 
Mr.  Newman,  and  so  he  was  styled  a  Tractarian  ;  but 
no  name  offered  itself  so  obviously  to  the  electors 
as  his,  and  in  due  time  his  friends  announced  their 
intention  of  bringing  him  forward.  His  competitor 

T 


274  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

was  Mr.  (afterwards  Archdeacon)  Garbett  of  Brase- 
nose,  the  college  of  Heber  and  Milman,  an  accom- 
plished gentleman  of  high  culture,  believed  to  have 
an  acquaintance,  not  common  then  in  Oxford,  with 
foreign  literature,  whose  qualifications  stood  high  in 
the  opinion  of  his  University  friends,  but  who  had 
given  no  evidence  to  the  public  of  his  claims  to  the 
office.  It  was  inevitable,  it  was  no  one's  special  fault, 
that  the  question  of  theological  opinions  should  intrude 
itself;  but  at  first  it  was  only  in  private  that  objections 
were  raised  or  candidatures  recommended  on  theo- 
logical grounds.  But  rumours  were  abroad  that  the 
authorities  of  Brasenose  were  canvassing  their  college 
on  these  grounds :  and  in  an  unlucky  moment  for 
Mr.  Williams,  Dr.  Pusey,  not  without  the  knowledge, 
but  without  the  assenting  judgment  of  Mr.  Newman, 
thought  it  well  to  send  forth  a  circular  in  Christ 
Church  first,  but  soon  with  wider  publicity,  asking 
support  for  Mr.  Williams  as  a  person  whose  known 
religious  views  would  ensure  his  making  his  office 
minister  to  religious  truth.  Nothing  could  be  more 
innocently  meant.  It  was  the  highest  purpose  to 
which  that  office  could  be  devoted.  But  the  mistake 
was  seen  on  all  sides  as  soon  as  made.  The  Principal 
of  Mr.  Garbett 's  college,  Dr.  Gilbert,  like  a  general 
jumping  on  his  antagonist  whom  he  has  caught  in  the 
act  of  a  false  move,  put  forth  a  dignified  counter-appeal, 
alleging  that  he  had  not  raised  this  issue,  but  adding 
that  as  it  had  been  raised  and  avowed  on  the  other 
side,  he  was  quite  willing  that  it  should  be  taken  into 
account,  and  the  dangers  duly  considered  of  that 
teaching  with  which  Dr.  Pusey 's  letter  had  identified 
Mr.  Williams.  No  one  from  that  moment  could 
prevent  the  contest  from  becoming  almost  entirely  a 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  275 

theological  one,  which  was  to  try  the  strength  of  the 
party  of  the  movement.  Attempts  were  made,  but  in 
vain,  to  divest  it  of  this  character.  The  war  of 
pamphlets  and  leaflets  dispersed  in  the  common-rooms, 
which  usually  accompanied  these  contests,  began,  and 
the  year  closed  with  preparations  for  a  severe  struggle 
when  the  University  met  in  the  following  January. 

The  other  matter  was  the  establishment  of  the 
Anglo- Prussian  bishopric  at  Jerusalem.  It  was  the 
object  of  the  ambition  of  M.  Bunsen  to  pave  the 
way  for  a  recognition,  by  the  English  Church,  of  the 
new  State  Church  of  Prussia,  and  ultimately  for  some 
closer  alliance  between  the  two  bodies ;  and  the 
plan  of  a  Protestant  Bishop  of  Jerusalem,  nominated 
alternately  by  England  and  Prussia,  consecrated  by 
English  Bishops,  and  exercising  jurisdiction  over 
English  and  German  Protestants  in  Palestine,  was 
proposed  by  him  to  Archbishop  Howley  and  Bishop 
Blomfield,  and  somewhat  hastily  and  incautiously 
accepted  by  them.  To  Mr.  Newman,  fighting  a  hard 
battle,  as  he  felt  it,  for  the  historical  and  constitutional 
catholicity  of  the  English  Church,  this  step  on  their 
part  came  as  a  practical  and  even  ostentatious  con- 
tradiction of  his  arguments.  England,  it  seemed, 
which  was  out  of  communion  with  the  East  and 
with  Rome,  could  lightly  enter  into  close  communion 
with  Lutherans  and  Calvinists  against  them  both. 
He  recorded  an  indignant  and  even  bitter  protest ; 
and  though  the  scheme  had  its  warm  apologists,  such 
as  Dr.  Hook  and  Mr.  F.  Maurice,  it  had  its  keen- 
sighted  critics,  and  it  was  never  received  with  favour 
by  the  Church  at  large.  And,  indeed,  it  was  only 
active  for  mischief.  It  created  irritation,  suspicion, 
discord  in  England,  while  no  German  cared  a  straw 


276  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

about  it.  Never  was  an  ambitious  scheme  so  marked 
by  impotence  and  failure  from  its  first  steps  to  its  last. 
But  it  was  one,  as  the  Apologia  informs  us,1  in  the 
chain  of  events  which  destroyed  Mr.  Newman's  belief 
in  the  English  Church.  "  It  was  one  of  the  blows,"  he 
writes,  "which  broke  me." 

The  next  year,  1842,  opened  with  war;  war  be- 
tween the  University  authorities  and  the  party  of 
the  movement,  which  was  to  continue  in  various  forms 
and  with  little  intermission  till  the  strange  and  pathetic 
events  of  1845  suspended  the  fighting  and  stunned  the 
fighters,  and  for  a  time  hushed  even  anger  in  feelings 
of  amazement,  sorrow,  and  fear.  Those  events  im- 
posed stillness  on  all  who  had  taken  part  in  the  strife, 
like  the  blowing  up  of  the  Orient  at  the  battle  of  the 
Nile. 

As  soon  as  the  University  met  in  January  1842, 
the  contest  for  the  Poetry  Professorship  was  settled. 
There  was  no  meeting  of  Convocation,  but  a  com- 
parison of  votes  gave  a  majority  of  three  to  two 
to  Mr.  Garbett,2  and  Mr.  Williams  withdrew.  The 
Tractarians  had  been  distinctly  beaten ;  it  was  their 
first  defeat  as  a  party.  It  seems  as  if  this  encouraged 
the  Hebdomadal  Board  to  a  move,  which  would  be 
felt  as  a  blow  against  the  Tractarians,  and  which, 
as  an  act  of  reparation  to  Dr.  Hampden,  would  give 
satisfaction  to  the  ablest  section  of  their  own  supporters, 
the  theological  Liberals.  They  proposed  to  repeal 
the  disqualification  which  had  been  imposed  on  Dr. 
Hampden  in  1836.  But  they  had  miscalculated. 
It  was  too  evidently  a  move  to  take  advantage 
of  the  recent  Tractarian  discomfiture  to  whitewash 
Dr.  Hampden's  Liberalism.  The  proposal,  and  the  way 

1  Pp.  243,  253.  2  Garbett,  921.     Williams,  623. 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  277 

in  which  it  was  made,  roused  a  strong  feeling  among 
the  residents  ;  a  request  to  withdraw  it  received  the 
signatures  not  only  of  moderate  Anglicans  and  in- 
dependent men,  like  Mr.  Francis  Faber  of  Magdalen, 
Mr.  Sewell,  the  Greswells,  and  Mr.  W.  Palmer  of 
Worcester,  but  of  Mr.  Tait  of  Balliol,  and  Mr. 
Golightly.  Dr.  Hampden's  own  attitude  did  not  help 
it.  There  was  great  want  of  dignity  in  his  ostenta- 
tious profession  of  orthodoxy  and  attachment  to  the 
Articles,  in  his  emphatic  adoption  of  Evangelical 
phraseology,  and  in  his  unmeasured  denunciation  of 
his  opponents,  and  especially  of  those  whom  he  viewed 
as  most  responsible  for  the  censure  of  1836 — the 
"  Tractarians  "  or  "  Romanisers."  And  the  difficulty 
with  those  who  had  passed  and  who  now  proposed 
to  withdraw  the  censure,  was  that  Dr.  Hampden 
persistently  and  loudly  declared  that  he  had  nothing 
to  retract,  and  retracted  nothing  ;  and  if  it  was  right 
to  pass  it  in  1836,  it  would  not  be  right  to  withdraw 
it  in  1842.  At  the  last  moment,  Mr.  Tait  and  Mr. 
Piers  Claughton  of  University  made  an  attempt  to  get 
something  from  Dr.  Hampden  which  might  pass  as  a 
withdrawal  of  what  was  supposed  to  be  dangerous 
in  his  Bampton  Lectures ;  and  there  were  some  even 
among  Mr.  Newman's  friends,  who,  disliking  from 
the  first  the  form  of  the  censure,  might  have  found  in 
such  a  withdrawal  a  reason  for  voting  for  its  repeal. 
But  Dr.  Hampden  was  obdurate.  The  measure  was 
pressed,  and  in  June  it  was  thrown  out  in  Convocation 
by  a  majority  of  three  to  two x — the  same  proportion, 
though  in  smaller  numbers,  as  in  the  vote  against  Mr. 
Williams.  The  measure  was  not  an  honest  one  on  the 
part  of  the  Hebdomadal  Board,  and  deserved  to  be 

1  The  numbers  were  334  to  219. 


278  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

defeated.  Among  the  pamphlets  which  the  discussion 
produced,  two  by  Mr.  James  Mozley  gave  early 
evidence,  by  their  force  of  statement  and  their 
trenchant  logic,  of  the  power  with  which  he  was  to 
take  part  in  the  questions  which  agitated  the  Uni- 
versity. 

Dr.  Hampden  took  his  revenge,  and  it  was  not 
a  noble  one.  The  fellows  of  certain  colleges  were 
obliged  to  proceed  to  the  B.D.  degree  on  pain  of 
forfeiting  their  fellowships.  The  exercises  for  the 
degree,  which,  by  the  Statutes,  took  the  old-fashioned 
shape  of  formal  Latin  disputations  between  Opponents 
and  Respondents  on  given  theses  in  the  Divinity 
School,  had  by  an  arrangement  introduced  by  Dr. 
Burton,  with  no  authority  from  the  Statutes,  come 
to  consist  of  two  English  essays  on  subjects  chosen  by 
the  candidate  and  approved  by  the  Divinity  Professor. 
The  exercises  for  the  degree  had  long  ceased  to 
be  looked  upon  as  very  serious  matters,  and  certainly 
were  never  regarded  as  tests  of  the  soundness  of 
the  candidate's  faith.  They  were  usually  on  well- 
worn  commonplaces,  of  which  the  Regius  Professor 
kept  a  stock,  and  about  which  no  one  troubled  himself 
but  the  person  who  wanted  the  degree.  It  was  not 
a  creditable  system,  but  it  was  of  a  piece  with  the 
prevalent  absence  of  any  serious  examination  for  the 
superior  degrees.  It  would  have  been  quite  befitting 
his  position,  if  Dr.  Hampden  had  called  the  attention 
of  the  authorities  to  the  evil  of  sham  exercises  for 
degrees  in  his  own  important  Faculty.  It  would  have 
been  quite  right  to  make  a  vigorous  effort  on  public 
grounds  to  turn  these  sham  trials  into  realities  ;  to  use 
them,  like  the  examination  for  the  B.A.  degree,  as 
tests  of  knowledge  and  competent  ability.  Such  a 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  279 

move  on  his  part  would  have  been  in  harmony  with 
the  legislation  which  had  recently  added  two  theo- 
logical Professors  to  the  Faculty,  and  had  sketched 
out,  however  imperfectly,  the  outlines  of  a  revived 
theological  school. 

This  is  what,  with  good  reason,  Dr.  Hampden 
might  have  attempted  on  general  grounds,  and  had  he 
been  successful  (though  this  in  the  suspicious  state  of 
University  feeling  was  not  very  likely)  he  would  have 
gained  in  a  regular  and  lawful  way  that  power  of  em- 
barrassing his  opponents  which  he  was  resolved  to  use 
in  defiance  of  all  existing  custom.  But  such  was  not 
the  course  which  he  chose.  Mr.  Macmullen  of  Corpus, 
who,  in  pursuance  of  the  College  Statutes,  had  to  pro- 
ceed to  the  B.D.  degree,  applied,  as  the  custom  was, 
for  theses  to  the  Professor.  Mr.  Macmullen  was  known 
to  hold  the  opinions  of  the  movement  school ;  of  course 
he  was  called  a  Tractarian ;  he  had  put  his  name  to 
some  of  the  many  papers  which  expressed  the  senti- 
ments of  his  friends  on  current  events.  Dr.  Hampden 
sent  him  two  propositions,  which  the  candidate  was  to 
support,  framed  so  as  to  commit  him  to  assertions 
which  Mr.  Macmullen,  whose  high  Anglican  opinions 
were  well  known,  could  not  consistently  make.  It  was 
a  novel  and  unexampled  act  on  the  part  of  the  Pro- 
fessor, to  turn  what  had  been  a  mere  formal  exercise 
into  a  sharp  and  sweeping  test  of  doctrine,  which 
would  place  all  future  Divinity  degrees  in  the  Univer- 
sity at  his  mercy;  and  the  case  was  made  more  serious, 
when  the  very  form  of  exercise  which  the  Professor 
used  as  an  instrument  of  such  formidable  power  was 
itself  without  question  unstatutable  and  illegal,  and 
had  been  simply  connived  at  by  the  authorities.  To 
introduce  by  his  own  authority  a  new  feature  into  a 


28o  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

system  which  he  had  no  business  to  use  at  all,  and  to 
do  this  for  the  first  time  with  the  manifest  purpose  of 
annoying  an  obnoxious  individual,  was,  on  Dr.  Hamp- 
den's  part,  to  do  more  to  discredit  his  chair  and  him- 
self, than  the  censure  of  the  University  could  do  ;  and 
it  was  as  unwise  as  it  was  unworthy.  The  strength  of 
his  own  case  before  the  public  was  that  he  could  be 
made  to  appear  as  the  victim  of  a  personal  and  partisan 
attack  ;  yet  on  the  first  opportunity  he  acts  in  the 
spirit  of  an  inquisitor,  and  that  not  in  fair  conflict  with 
some  one  worthy  of  his  hostility,  but  to  wreak  an 
injury,  in  a  matter  of  private  interest,  on  an  individual, 
in  no  way  known  to  him  or  opposed  to  him,  except  as 
holding  certain  unpopular  opinions. 

Mr.  Macmullen  was  not  the  person  to  take  such 
treatment  quietly.      The    right   was    substantially    on 
his    side,    and    the    Professor,    and    the    University 
authorities  who  more  or  less  played  into  the  hands 
of    the     Professor,     in    defence    of     his    illegal    and 
ultimately    untenable    claims,     appeared     before    the 
University,   the  one  as  a   persecutor,   the   others    as 
rulers  who  were  afraid  to  do  justice  on  behalf  of  an 
ill-used    man    because    he    was    a    Tractarian.      The 
right  course  was  perfectly  clear.     It  was  to  put  an  end 
to  these  unauthorised  exercises,  and  to  recall  both  can- 
didates and  Professor  to  the  statutable  system  which 
imposed  disputations  conducted  under  the  moderator- 
ship  of  the  Professor,  but  which  gave  him  no  veto,  at 
the  time,  on  the  theological  sufficiency  of  the  disputa- 
tions, leaving  him  to  state  his  objections,  if  he  was  not 
satisfied,  when  the  candidate's  degree  was  asked  for  in 
the  House  of  Congregation.     This  course,  after  some 
hesitation,  was  followed,  but  only  partially  ;  and  with- 
out allowing  or  disallowing  the   Professor's  claim  to  a 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  281 

veto,  the  Vice-Chancellor  on  his  own  responsibility 
stopped  the  degree.  A  vexatious  dispute  lingered  on 
for  two  or  three  years,  with  actions  in  the  Vice- 
Chancellor's  Court,  and  distinguished  lawyers  to  plead 
for  each  side,  and  appeals  to  the  University  Court  of 
Delegates,  who  reversed  the  decision  of  the  Vice- 
Chancellor's  assessor.  Somehow  or  other,  Mr.  Mac- 
mullen  at  last  got  his  degree,  but  at  the  cost  of  a  great 
deal  of  ill-blood  in  Oxford,  for  which  Dr.  Hampden, 
by  his  unwarranted  interference,  and  the  University 
authorities,  by  their  questionable  devices  to  save  the 
credit  and  claims  of  one  of  their  own  body,  must  be 
held  mainly  responsible. 

Before  the  matter  was  ended,  they  were  made  to 
feel,  in  rather  a  startling  way,  how  greatly  they  had 
lost  the  confidence  of  the  University.  One  of  the 
attempts  to  find  a  way  out  of  the  tangle  of  the  dispute 
was  the  introduction,  in  February  1844,  of  a  Statute 
which  should  give  to  the  Professor  the  power  which 
was  now  contested,  and  practically  place  all  the 
Divinity  degrees  under  the  control  of  a  Board  in  con- 
junction with  the  Vice-Chancellor.1  The  proposed 
legislation  raised  such  indignation  in  the  University, 
that  the  Hebdomadal  Board  took  back  their  scheme 
for  further  revision,  and  introduced  it  again  in  a 
modified  shape,  which  still  however  gave  new  powers 
to  the  Professor  and  the  Vice-Chancellor.  But  the 
University  would  have  none  of  it.  No  one  could  say 
that  the  defeat  of  the  altered  Statute  by  341  to  21  was 
the  work  merely  of  a  party.2  It  was  the  most  decisive 
vote  given  in  the  course  of  these  conflicts.  And  it  was 
observed  that  on  the  same  day  Mr.  Macmullen's  degree 
was  vetoed  by  the  Vice-Chancellor  at  the  instance  of 

1    Christian  Remembrancer,  vol.  ix.  p.   175.  2  Ibid.  pp.  177-179. 


282  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

Dr.  Hampden  at  ten  o'clock  in  Congregation,  and  the 
Hebdomadal  Board,  which  had  supported  him,  received 
the  vote  of  want  of  confidence  at  noon  in  Convocation. 
Nothing  could  show  more  decisively  that  the 
authorities  in  the  Hebdomadal  Board  were  out  of 
touch  with  the  feeling  of  the  University,  or,  at  all 
events,  of  that  part  of  it  which  was  resident.  The 
residents  were  not,  as  a  body,  identified  with  the  Tract- 
arians  ;  it  would  be  more  true  to  say  that  the  residents, 
as  a  body,  looked  on  this  marked  school  with  misgiving 
and  apprehension  ;  but  they  saw  what  manner  of  men 
these  Tractarians  were  ;  they  lived  with  them  in  college 
and  common-room  ;  their  behaviour  was  before  their 
brethren  as  a  whole,  with  its  strength  and  its  weakness, 
its  moral  elevation  and  its  hazardous  excitement,  its 
sincerity  of  purpose  and  its  one-sidedness  of  judgment 
and  sympathy,  its  unfairness  to  what  was  English,  its 
over-value  for  what  was  foreign.  Types  of  those  who 
looked  at  things  more  or  less  independently  were  Mr. 
Hussey  of  Christ  Church,  Mr.  C.  P.  Eden  of  Oriel, 
Mr.  Sewell  of  Exeter,  Mr.  Francis  Faber  of  Mag- 
dalen, Dr.  Greenhill  of  Trinity,  Mr.  Wall  of  Balliol, 
Mr.  Hobhouse  of  Merton,  with  some  of  the  more 
consistent  Liberals,  like  Mr.  Stanley  of  University, 
and  latterly  Mr.  Tait.  Men  of  this  kind,  men  of  high 
character  and  weight  in  Oxford,  found  much  to  dislike 
and  regret  in  the  Tractarians.  But  they  could  also 
see  that  the  leaders  of  the  Hebdomadal  Board  laboured 
under  a  fatal  incapacity  to  recognise  what  these  un- 
popular Tractarians  were  doing  for  the  cause  of  true 
and  deep  religion ;  they  could  see  that  the  judgment 
of  the  Heads  of  Houses,  living  as  they  did  apart,  in  a 
kind  of  superior  state,  was  narrow,  ill-informed,  and 
harsh,  and  that  the  warfare  which  they  waged  was 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  283 

petty,  irritating,  and  profitless ;  while  they  also  saw 
with  great  clearness  that  under  cover  of  suppressing 
"  Puseyism,"  the  policy  of  the  Board  was,  in  fact,  tend- 
ing to  increase  and  strengthen  the  power  of  an  irre- 
sponsible and  incompetent  oligarchy,  not  only  over 
a  troublesome  party,  but  over  the  whole  body  of 
residents.  To  the  great  honour  of  Oxford  it  must  be 
said,  that  throughout  these  trying  times,  on  to  the  very 
end,  there  was  in  the  body  of  Masters  a  spirit  of  fair- 
ness, a  recognition  of  the  force  both  of  argument  and 
character,  a  dislike  of  high-handedness  and  shabbiness, 
which  was  in  strong  and  painful  contrast  to  the  short- 
sighted violence  in  which  the  Hebdomadal  Board  was 
unhappily  induced  to  put  their  trust,  and  which  proved 
at  last  the  main  cause  of  the  overthrow  of  their  power. 
When  changes  began  to  threaten  Oxford,  there  was  no 
one  to  say  a  word  for  them. 

But,  for  the  moment,  in  spite  of  this  defeat  in  Con- 
vocation, they  had  no  misgivings  as  to  the  wisdom  of 
their  course  or  the  force  of  their  authority.  There 
was,  no  doubt,  much  urging  from  outside,  both  on 
political  and  theological  grounds,  to  make  them  use 
their  power  to  stay  the  plague  of  Tractarianism  ;  and 
they  were  led  by  three  able  and  resolute  men,  unfortun- 
ately unable  to  understand  the  moral  or  the  intellectual 
character  of  the  movement,  and  having  the  highest 
dislike  and  disdain  for  it  in  both  aspects — Dr.  Haw- 
kins, Provost  of  Oriel,  the  last  remaining  disciple  of 
Whately's  school,  a  man  of  rigid  conscientiousness,  and 
very  genuine  though  undemonstrative  piety,  of  great 
kindliness  in  private  life,  of  keen  and  alert  intellect, 
but  not  of  breadth  and  knowledge  proportionate  to 
his  intellectual  power ;  Dr.  Symons,  Warden  of 
Wadham,  a  courageous  witness  for  Evangelical 


284  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

divinity  in  the  days  when  Evangelicals  were  not 
in  fashion  in  Oxford,  a  man  of  ponderous  and 
pedantic  learning  and  considerable  practical  acute- 
ness  ;  and  Dr.  Card  well,  Principal  of  St.  Alban's  Hall, 
more  a  man  of  the  world  than  his  colleagues,  with 
considerable  knowledge  of  portions  of  English  Church 
history.  Under  the  inspiration  of  these  chiefs,  the 
authorities  had  adopted,  as  far  as  they  could,  the 
policy  of  combat;  and  the  Vice -Chancellor  of  the 
time,  Dr.  Wynter  of  St.  John's,  a  kind-hearted  man, 
but  quite  unfit  to  moderate  among  the  strong  wills 
and  fierce  tempers  round  him,  was  induced  to  single 
out  for  the  severest  blow  yet  struck,  the  most  dis- 
tinguished person  in  the  ranks  of  the  movement, 
Dr.  Pusey  himself. 

Dr.  Pusey  was  a  person  with  whom  it  was  not  wise 
to  meddle,  unless  his  assailants  could  make  out  a  case 
without  a  flaw.  He  was  without  question  the  most 
venerated  person  in  Oxford.  Without  an  equal,  in 
Oxford  at  least,  in  the  depth  and  range  of  his  learn- 
ing, he  stood  out  yet  more  impressively  among  his 
fellows  in  the  lofty  moral  elevation  and  simplicity  of 
his  life,  the  blamelessness  of  his  youth,  and  the  pro- 
found devotion  of  his  manhood,  to  which  the  family 
sorrows  of  his  later  years,  and  the  habits  which  grew 
out  of  them,  added  a  kind  of  pathetic  and  solemn 
interest.  Stern  and  severe  in  his  teaching  at  one 
time, — at  least  as  he  was  understood, — beyond  even  the 
severity  of  Puritanism,  he  was  yet  overflowing  with 
affection,  tender  and  sympathetic  to  all  who  came  near 
him,  and,  in  the  midst  of  continual  controversy,  he 
endeavoured,  with  deep  conscientiousness,  to  avoid 
the  bitternesses  of  controversy.  He  was  the  last  man 
to  attack  ;  much  more  the  last  man  to  be  unfair  to. 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  285 

The  men  who  ruled  in  Oxford  contrived,  in  attacking 
him,  to  make  almost  every  mistake  which  it  was  pos- 
sible to  make. 

On  the  24th  of  May  1843  Dr.  Pusey,  intending  to 
balance  and  complement  the  severer,  and,  to  many,  the 
disquieting  aspects  of  doctrine  in  his  work  on  Baptism, 
preached  on  the  Holy  Eucharist  as  a  comfort  to  the 
penitent.  He  spoke  of  it  as  a  disciple  of  Andrewes 
and  Bramhall  would  speak  of  it ;  it  was  a  high  Angli- 
can sermon,  full,  after  the  example  of  the  Homilies, 
Jeremy  Taylor,  and  devotional  writers  like  George 
Herbert  and  Bishop  Ken,  of  the  fervid  language  of 
the  Fathers ;  and  that  was  all.  Beyond  this  it  did 
not  go ;  its  phraseology  was  strictly  within  Anglican 
limits.  In  the  course  of  the  week  that  followed, 
the  University  was  surprised  by  the  announcement 
that  Dr.  Faussett,  the  Margaret  Professor  of  Divinity, 
had  "delated"  the  sermon  to  the  Vice-Chancellor  as 
teaching  heresy ;  and  even  more  surprised  at  the 
news  that  the  Vice-Chancellor  had  commenced  pro- 
ceedings. The  Statutes  provided  that  when  a  sermon 
was  complained  of,  or  delated  to  the  Vice-Chancellor, 
the  Vice -Chancellor  should  demand  a  copy  of  the 
sermon,  and  summoning  to  him  as  his  assessors  Six 
Doctors  of  Divinity,  should  examine  the  language 
complained  of,  and,  if  necessary,  condemn  and  punish 
the  preacher.  The  Statute  is  thus  drawn  up  in 
general  terms,  and  prescribes  nothing  as  to  the  mode 
in  which  the  examination  into  the  alleged  offence  is 
to  be  carried  on  ;  that  is,  it  leaves  it  to  the  Vice- 
Chancellor's  discretion.  What  happened  was  this. 
The  sermon  was  asked  for,  but  the  name  of  the 
accuser  was  not  given  ;  the  Statute  did  not  enjoin  it. 
The  sermon  was  sent,  with  a  request  from  Dr.  Pusey 


286  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

that  he  might  have  a  hearing.  The  Six  Doctors 
were  appointed,  five  of  them  being  Dr.  Hawkins, 
Dr.  Symons,  Dr.  Jenkyns,  Dr.  Ogilvie,  Dr.  Jelf ;  the 
Statute  said  the  Regius  Professor  was,  if  possible,  to 
be  one  of  the  number ;  as  he  was  under  the  ban  of  a 
special  Statute,  he  was  spared  the  task,  and  his  place 
was  taken  by  the  next  Divinity  Professor,  Dr.  Faus- 
sett,  the  person  who  had  preferred  the  charge,  and 
who  was  thus,  from  having  been  accuser,  promoted  to 
be  a  judge.  To  Dr.  Pusey's  request  for  a  hearing, 
no  answer  was  returned  ;  the  Statute,  no  doubt,  said 
nothing  of  a  hearing.  But  after  the  deliberations  of 
the  judges  were  concluded,  and  after  the  decision  to 
condemn  the  sermon  had  been  reached,  one  of  them, 
Dr.  Pusey's  old  friend,  Dr.  Jelf,  was  privately  charged 
with  certain  communications  from  the  Vice-Chancellor, 
on  which  the  seal  of  absolute  secrecy  was  imposed,  and 
which  in  fact,  we  believe,  have  never  been  divulged 
from  that  day  to  this.  Whatever  passed  between  the 
Vice-Chancellor,  Dr.  Jelf,  and  Dr.  Pusey,  it  had  no 
effect  in  arresting  the  sentence ;  and  it  came  out,  in 
informal  ways,  and  through  Dr.  Pusey  himself,  that  on 
the  2d  of  June  Dr.  Pusey  had  been  accused  and  con- 
demned for  having  taught  doctrine  contrary  to  that  of 
the  Church  of  England,  and  that  by  the  authority  of 
the  Vice-Chancellor  he  was  suspended  from  preaching 
within  the  University  for  two  years.  But  no  formal 
notification  of  the  transaction  was  ever  made  to  the 
University. 

The  summary  suppression  of  erroneous  and  dan- 
gerous teaching  had  long  been  a  recognised  part  of 
the  University  discipline ;  and  with  the  ideas  then 
accepted  of  the  religious  character  of  the  University, 
it  was  natural  that  some  such  power  as  that  given  in 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  287 

the  Statutes  should  be  provided.  The  power,  even* 
after  all  the  changes  in  Oxford,  exists  still,  and  has 
been  recently  appealed  to.  Dr.  Pusey,  as  a  member 
of  the  University,  had  no  more  right  than  any  other 
preacher  to  complain  of  his  doctrine  being  thus  solemnly 
called  in  question.  But  it  is  strange  that  it  should  not 
have  occurred  to  the  authorities  that,  under  the  con- 
ditions of  modern  times,  and  against  a  man  like 
Dr.  Pusey,  such  power  should  be  warily  used.  For 
it  was  not  only  arbitrary  power,  such  as  was  exerted 
in  the  condemnation  of  No.  90,  but  it  was  arbitrary 
power  acting  under  the  semblance  of  a  judicial  inquiry, 
with  accusers,  examination,  trial,  judges,  and  a  heavy 
penalty.  The  act  of  a  court  of  justice  which  sets  at 
defiance  the  rules  of  justice  is  a  very  different  thing 
from  a  straightforward  act  of  arbitrary  power,  because 
it  pretends  to  be  what  it  is  not.  The  information 
against  Dr.  Pusey,  if  accepted,  involved  a  trial — that 
was-  the  fixed  condition  and  point  of  departure  from 
which  there  was  no  escaping — and  if  a  trial  be  held, 
then,  if  it  be  not  a  fair  trial,  the  proceeding  becomes, 
according  to  English  notions,  a  flagrant  and  cowardly 
wrong.  All  this,  all  the  intrinsic  injustice,  all  the 
scandal  and  discredit  in  the  eyes  of  honest  men, 
was  forgotten  in  the  obstinate  and  blind  confidence  in 
the  letter  of  a  vague  Statute.  The  accused  was  not 
allowed  to  defend  or  explain  himself;  he  was  refused 
the  knowledge  of  the  definite  charges  against  him  ;  he 
was  refused,  in  spite  of  his  earnest  entreaties,  a  hearing, 
even  an  appearance  in  the  presence  of  his  judges.  The 
Statute,  it  was  said,  enjoined  none  of  these  things. 
The  name  of  his  accuser  was  not  told  him ;  he  was 
left  to  learn  it  by  report.  To  the  end  of  the  business 
all  was  wrought  in  secrecy  ;  no  one  knows  to  this  day 


288  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

how  the  examination  of  the  sermon  was  conducted,  or 
what  were  the  opinions  of  the  judges.  The  Statute,  it 
was  said,  neither  enjoined  nor  implied  publicity.  To 
this  day  no  one  knows  what  were  the  definite  passages, 
what  was  the  express  or  necessarily  involved  heresy  or 
contradiction  of  the  formularies,  on  which  the  condem- 
nation was  based ;  nor — except  on  the  supposition  of 
gross  ignorance  of  English  divinity  on  the  part  of  the 
judges — is  it  easy  for  a  reader  to  put  his  finger  on  the 
probably  incriminated  passages.  To  make  the  proceed- 
ings still  more  unlike  ordinary  public  justice,  informal 
and  private  communications  were  carried  on  between 
the  judge  and  the  accused,  in  which  the  accused  was 
bound  to  absolute  silence,  and  forbidden  to  consult  his 
nearest  friends. 

And  of  the  judges  what  can  be  said  but  that  they 
were,  with  one  exception,  the  foremost  and  sternest 
opponents  of  all  that  was  identified  with  Dr.  Pusey's 
name ;  and  that  one  of  them  was  the  colleague  who 
had  volunteered  to  accuse  him  ?  Dr.  Faussett's 
share  in  the  matter  is  intelligible  ;  hating  the  move- 
ment in  all  its  parts,  he  struck  with  the  vehemence  of 
a  mediaeval  zealot.  But  that  men  like  Dr.  Hawkins  and 
Dr.  Ogilvie,  one  of  them  reputed  to  be  a  theologian, 
the  other  one  of  the  shrewdest  and  most  cautious  of 
men,  and  in  ordinary  matters  one  of  the  most  conscien- 
tious and  fairest,  should  not  have  seen  what  justice,  or 
at  least  the  show  of  justice,  demanded,  and  what  the 
refusal  of  that  demand  would  look  like,  and  that  they 
should  have  persuaded  the  Vice-Chancellor  to  accept 
the  entire  responsibility  of  haughtily  refusing  it,  is, 
even  to  those  who  remember  the  excitement  of  those 
days,  a  subject  of  wonder.  The  plea  was  actually  put 
forth  that  such  opportunities  of  defence  of  his  language 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  289 

and  teaching'  as  Dr.  Pusev  asked  for  would  have  led  to 

O  j 

the  "  inconvenience "  of  an  interminable  debate  and 
confronting  of  texts  and  authorities.1  The  fact,  with 
Dr.  Pusey  as  the  accused  person,  is  likely  enough  ;  but 
in  a  criminal  charge  with  a  heavy  penalty,  it  would 
have  been  better  for  the  reputation  of  the  judges  to 
have  submitted  to  the  inconvenience. 

It  was  a  great  injustice  and  a  great  blunder — a 
blunder,  because  the  gratuitous  defiance  of  accepted 
rules  of  fairness  neutralised  whatever  there  might  seem 
to  be  of  boldness  and  strength  in  the  blow.  They 
were  afraid  to  meet  Dr.  Pusey  face  to  face.  They 
were  afraid  to  publish  the  reasons  of  their  condem- 
nation. The  effect  on  the  University,  both  on  resident 
and  non-resident  members,  was  not  to  be  misunder- 
stood. The  Protestantism  of  the  Vice-Chancellor  and 
the  Six  Doctors  was,  of  course,  extolled  by  partisans 
in  the  press  with  reckless  ignorance  and  reckless  con=- 
tempt  at  once  for  common  justice  and  their  own 
consistency.  One  person  of  some  distinction  at 
Oxford  ventured  to  make  himself  the  mouthpiece  of 
those  who  were  bold  enough  to  defend  the  proceeding 
— the  recently-elected  Professor  of  Poetry,  Mr.  Garbett. 
But  deep  offence  was  given  among  the  wiser  and  more 
reasonable  men  who  had  a  regard  for  the  character  of 
the  University.  A  request  to  know  the  grounds  of  the 
sentence  from  men  who  were  certainly  of  no  party  was 
curtly  refused  by  the  Vice-Chancellor,  with  a  suggestion 
that  it  did  not  concern  them.  A  more  important 
memorial  was  sent  from  London,  showing  how  persons 
at  a  distance  were  shocked  by  the  unaccountable  indif- 
ference to  the  appearance  of  justice  in  the  proceeding. 
It  was  signed  among  others  by  Mr.  Gladstone  and 

1  Cf.  British  Critic,  No.  xlvii.  pp.  221-223. 
U 


290  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

Mr.  Justice  Coleridge.  The  Vice-Chancellor  lost  his 
temper.  He  sent  back  the  memorial  to  London  "by 
the  hands  of  his  bedel,"  as  if  that  in  some  way  stamped 
his  official  disapprobation  more  than  if  it  had  been 
returned  through  the  post.  And  he  proceeded,  in 
language  wonderful  even  for  that  moment,  as  "  Resi- 
dent Governor"  of  the  University,  to  reprimand  states- 
men and  lawyers  of  eminence  and  high  character,  not 
merely  for  presuming  to  interfere  with  his  own  duties, 
but  for  forgetting  the  oaths  on  the  strength  of  which 
they  had  received  their  degrees,  and  for  coming  very 
near  to  that  high,  almost  highest,  academical  crime, 
the  crime  of  being  perturbatores  pads — breaking  the 
peace  of  the  University. 

Such  foolishness,  affecting  dignity,  only  made  more 
to  talk  of.  If  the  men  who  ruled  the  University  had 
wished  to  disgust  and  alienate  the  Masters  of  Arts,  and 
especially  the  younger  ones  who  were  coming  forward 
into  power  and  influence,  they  could  not  have  done 
better.  The  chronic  jealousy  and  distrust  of  the  time 
were  deepened.  And  all  this  was  aggravated  by  what 
went  on  in  private.  A  system  of  espionage,  whisper- 
ings, backbitings,  and  miserable  tittle-tattle,  sometimes 
of  the  most  slanderous  or  the  most  ridiculous  kind, 
was  set  going  all  over  Oxford.  Never  in  Oxford, 
before  or  since,  were  busybodies  more  truculent  or 
more  unscrupulous.  Difficulties  arose  between  Heads 
of  Colleges  and  their  tutors.  Candidates  for  fellow- 
ships were  closely  examined  as  to  their  opinions  and 
their  associates.  Men  applying  for  testimonials  were 
cross-questioned  on  No.  90,  as  to  the  infallibility  of 
general  councils,  purgatory,  the  worship  of  images,  the 
Ora  pro  nobis,  and  the  intercession  of  the  saints  :  the 
real  critical  questions  upon  which  men's  minds  were 


xvi  THE  THREE  DEFEATS  291 

working  being  absolutely  uncomprehended  and  ignored. 
It  was  a  miserable  state  of  misunderstanding  and  dis- 
trust, and  none  of  the  University  leaders  had  the 
temper  and  the  manliness  to  endeavour  with  justice 
and  knowledge  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  it.  It  was 
enough  to  suppose  that  a  Popish  Conspiracy  was  being 
carried  on. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

W.    G.    WARD 

IF  only  the  Oxford  authorities  could  have  had  patience 
—if  only  they  could  have  known  more  largely  and 
more  truly  the  deep  changes  that  were  at  work  every- 
where, and  how  things  were  beginning  to  look  in  the 
eyes  of  the  generation  that  was  coming,  perhaps  many 
things  might  have  been  different.  Yes,  it  was  true 
that  there  was  a  strong  current  setting  towards  Rome. 
It  was  acting  on  some  of  the  most  vigorous  of  the 
younger  men.  It  was  acting  powerfully  on  the  fore- 
most mind  in  Oxford.  Whither,  if  not  arrested,  it 
was  carrying  them  was  clear,  but  as  yet  it  was  by  no 
means  clear  at  what  rate ;  and  time,  and  thought,  and 
being  left  alone  and  dealt  with  justly,  have  a  great 
effect  on  men's  minds.  Extravagance,  disproportion, 
mischievous,  dangerous  exaggeration,  in  much  that 
was  said  and  taught — all  this  might  have  settled 
down,  as  so  many  things  are  in  the  habit  of  settling 
down,  into  reasonable  and  practical  shapes,  after  a 
first  burst  of  crudeness  and  strain — as,  in  fact,  it  did 
settle  down  at  last.  For  Anglicanism  itself  was  not 
Roman ;  friends  and  foes  said  it  was  not,  to  reproach 
as  well  as  to  defend  it.  It  was  not  Roman  in  Dr. 
Pusey,  though  he  was  not  afraid  to  acknowledge  what 


CHAP,  xvn  W.  G.    WARD  293 

was  good  in  Rome.  It  was  not  Roman  in  Mr.  Keble 
and  his  friends,  in  Dr.  Moberly  of  Winchester,  and  the 
Barters.  It  was  not  Roman  in  Mr.  Isaac  Williams, 
Mr.  Copeland,  and  Mr.  Woodgate,  each  of  them  a 
centre  of  influence  in  Oxford  and  the  country.  It  was 
not  Roman  in  the  devoted  Charles  Marriott,  or  in 
Isaac  Williams's  able  and  learned  pupil,  Mr.  Arthur 
Haddan.  It  was  not  Roman  in  Mr.  James  Mozley, 
after  Mr.  Newman,  the  most  forcible  and  impressive 
of  the  Oxford  writers.  A  distinctively  English  party 
grew  up,  both  in  Oxford  and  away  from  it,  strong  in 
eminent  names,  in  proportion  as  Roman  sympathies 
showed  themselves.  These  men  were,  in  any  fair 
judgment,  as  free  from  Romanising  as  any  of  their 
accusers ;  but  they  made  their  appeal  for  patience 
and  fair  judgment  in  vain.  If  only  the  rulers  could 
have  had  patience  : — but  patience  is  a  difficult  virtue  in 
the  presence  of  what  seem  pressing  dangers.  Their 
policy  was  wrong,  stupid,  unjust,  pernicious.  It  was  a 
deplorable  mistake,  and  all  will  wish  now  that  the 
discredit  of  it  did  not  rest  on  the  history  of  Oxford. 
And  yet  it  was  the  mistake  of  upright  and  conscien- 
tious men. 

Doubtless  there  was  danger ;  the  danger  was  that 
a  number  of  men  would  certainly  not  acquiesce  much 
longer  in  Anglicanism,  while  the  Heads  continued 
absolutely  blind  to  what  was  really  in  these  men's 
thoughts.  For  the  Heads  could  not  conceive  the  attrac- 
tion which  the  Roman  Church  had  for  a  religious  man  ; 
they  talked  in  the  old-fashioned  way  about  the  absurdity 
of  the  Roman  system.  They  could  not  understand 
how  reasonable  men  could  turn  Roman  Catholics. 
They  accounted  for  it  by  supposing  a  silly  hankering 
after  the  pomp  or  the  frippery  of  Roman  Catholic 


294  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

worship,  and  at  best  a  craving  after  the  romantic  and 
sentimental.  Their  thoughts  dwelt  continually  on 
image  worship  and  the  adoration  of  saints.  But  what 
really  was  astir  was  something  much  deeper — some- 
thing much  more  akin  to  the  new  and  strong  forces 
which  were  beginning  to  act  in  very  different  direc- 
tions from  this  in  English  society — forces  which  were 
not  only  leading  minds  to  Rome,  but  making  men 
Utilitarians,  Rationalists,  Positivists,  and,  though  the 
word  had  not  yet  been  coined,  Agnostics.  The  men 
who  doubted  about  the  English  Church  saw  in  Rome 
a  strong,  logical,  consistent  theory  of  religion,  not  of 
yesterday  nor  to-day — not  only  comprehensive  and 
profound,  but  actually  in  full  work,  and  fruitful  in 
great  results  ;  and  this,  in  contrast  to  the  alleged  and 
undeniable  anomalies  and  shortcomings  of  Protestant- 
ism and  Anglicanism.  And  next,  there  was  the 
immense  amount  which  they  saw  in  Rome  of  self- 
denial  and  self-devotion  ;  the  surrender  of  home  and 
family  in  the  clergy  ;  the  great  organised  ministry  of 
women  in  works  of  mercy  ;  the  resolute  abandonment 
of  the  world  and  its  attractions  in  the  religious  life. 
If  in  England  there  flourished  the  homely  and  modest 
types  of  goodness,  it  was  in  Rome  that,  at  that  day  at 
least,  men  must  look  for  the  heroic.  They  were  not 
indisposed  to  the  idea  that  a  true  Church  which  had  lost 
all  this  might  yet  regain  it,  and  they  were  willing  to  wait 
and  see  what  the  English  Church  would  do  to  recover 
what  it  had  lost ;  but  there  was  obviously  a  long  way 
to  make  up,  and  they  came  to  think  that  there  was  no 
chance  of  its  overtaking  its  true  position.  Of  course 
they  knew  all  that  was  so  loudly  urged  about  the 
abuses  and  mischiefs  growing  out  of  the  professed 
severity  of  Rome.  They  knew  that  in  spite  of  it 


IV.  G.    WARD  295 


foreign  society  was  lax  ;  that  the  discipline  of  the 
confessional  was  often  exercised  with  a  light  rein. 
But  if  the  good  side  of  it  was  real,  they  easily  ac- 
counted for  the  bad  :  the  bad  did  not  destroy,  it  was 
a  tacit  witness  to  the  good.  And  they  knew  the  Latin 
Church  mainly  from  France,  where  it  was  more  in 
earnest,  and  exhibited  more  moral  life  and  intellectual 
activity,  than,  as  far  as  Englishmen  knew,  in  Italy  or 
Spain.  There  was  a  strong  rebound  from  insular 
ignorance  and  unfairness,  when  English  travellers 
came  on  the  poorly  paid  but  often  intelligent  and  hard- 
working French  clergy  ;  on  the  great  works  of  mercy 
in  the  towns ;  on  the  originality  and  eloquence  of  De 
Maistre,  La  Mennais,  Lacordaire,  Montalembert. 

These  ideas  took  possession  of  a  remarkable  mind, 
the  index  and  organ  of  a  remarkable  character.  Mr. 
W.  G.  Ward  had  learned  the  interest  of  earnest  reli- 
gion from  Dr.  Arnold,  in  part  through  his  close  friend 
Arthur  Stanley.  But  if  there  was  ever  any  tendency 
in  him  to  combine  with  the  peculiar  elements  of  the 
Rugby  School,  it  was  interrupted  in  its  nascent  state, 
as  chemists  speak,  by  the  intervention  of  a  still-  more 
potent  affinity,  the  personality  of  Mr.  Newman.  Mr. 
Ward  had  developed  in  the  Oxford  Union,  and  in  a 
wide  social  circle  of  the  most  rising  men  of  the  time — 
including  Tait,  Cardwell,  Lowe,  Roundell  Palmer — a 
very  unusual  dialectical  skill  and  power  of  argumenta- 
tive statement :  qualities  which  seemed  to  point  to  the 
House  of  Commons.  But  Mr.  Newman's  ideas  gave 
him  material,  not  only  for  argument  but  for  thought. 
The  lectures  and  sermons  at  St.  Mary's  subdued  and 
led  him  captive.  The  impression  produced  on  him 
was  expressed  in  the  formula  that  primitive  Christianity 
might  have  been  corrupted  into  Popery,  but  that  Pro- 


296  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

testantism  never  could.1  For  a  moment  he  hung  in 
the  wind.  He  might  have  been  one  of  the  earliest  of 
Broad  Churchmen.  He  might  have  been  a  Utilitarian 
and  Necessitarian  follower  of  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill.  But 
moral  influences  of  a  higher  kind  prevailed.  And  he 
became,  in  the  most  thoroughgoing  yet  independent 
fashion,  a  disciple  of  Mr.  Newman.  He  brought  to 
his  new  side  a  fresh  power  of  controversial  writing  ; 
but  his  chief  influence  was  a  social  one,  from  his  bright 
and  attractive  conversation,  his  bold  and  startling 
candour,  his  frank,  not  to  say  reckless,  fearlessness  of 
consequences,  his  unrivalled  skill  in  logical  fence,  his 
unfailing  good-humour  and  love  of  fun,  in  which  his 
personal  clumsiness  set  off  the  vivacity  and  nimbleness 
of  his  joyous  moods.  "  He  was,"  says  Mr.  Mozley,  "  a 
great  musical  critic,  knew  all  the  operas,  and  was  an 
admirable  buffo  singer." — No  one  could  doubt  that, 
having  started,  Mr.  Ward  would  go  far  and  probably 
go  fast. 

Mr.  Ward  was  well  known  in  Oxford,  and  his 
language  might  have  warned  the  Heads  that  if  there 
was  a  drift  towards  Rome,  it  came  from  something 
much  more  serious  than  a  hankering  after  a  senti- 
mental ritual  or  mediaeval  legends.  In  Mr.  Ward's 
writings  in  the  British  Critic,  as  in  his  conversation— 
and  he  wrote  much  and  at  great  length — three  ideas 
were  manifestly  at  the  bottom  of  his  attraction  to 
Rome.  One  was  that  Rome  did,  and,  he  believed, 
nothing  else  did,  keep  up  the  continuous  recognition 
of  the  supernatural  element  in  religion,  that  conscious- 
ness of  an  ever-present  power  not  of  this  world  which 
is  so  prominent  a  feature  in  the  New  Testament,  and 
which  is  spoken  of  there  as  a  permanent  and  character- 

1  Cf.  T.  Mozley,  Reminiscences,  vol.  ii.  p.  5. 


W.  G.    WARD  297 


istic  element  in  the  Gospel  dispensation.  The  Roman 
view  of  the  nature  and  offices  of  the  Church,  of  man's 
relations  to  the  unseen  world,  of  devotion,  of  the 
Eucharist  and  of  the  Sacraments  in  general,  assumed 
and  put  forward  this  supernatural  aspect ;  other 
systems  ignored  it  or  made  it  mean  nothing,  unless 
in  secret  to  the  individual  and  converted  soul.  In 
the  next  place  he  revolted — no  weaker  word  can  be 
used  —  from  the  popular  exhibition  in  England, 
more  or  less  Lutheran  and  Calvinistic,  of  the  doctrine 
of  justification.  The  ostentatious  separation  of  justi- 
fication from  morality,  with  all  its  theological  refine- 
ments and  fictions,  seemed  to  him  profoundly  un- 
scriptural,  profoundly  unreal  and  hollow,  or  else 
profoundly  immoral.  In  conscience  and  moral  honesty 
and  strict  obedience  he  saw  the  only  safe  and  trust- 
worthy guidance  in  regard  to  the  choice  and  formation 
of  religious  opinions ;  it  was  a  principle  on  which  all 
his  philosophy  was  built,  that  "careful  and  individual 
moral  discipline  is  the  only  possible  basis  on  which 
Christian  faith  and  practice  can  be  reared."  In  the 
third  place  he  was  greatly  affected,  not  merely  by  the 
paramount  place  of  sanctity  in  the  Roman  theology 
and  the  professed  Roman  system,  but  by  the  standard 
of  saintliness  which  he  found  there,  involving  complete 
and  heroic  self-sacrifice  for  great  religious  ends,  com- 
plete abandonment  of  the  world,  painful  and  continuous 
self-discipline,  purified  and  exalted  religious  affections, 
beside  which  English  piety  and  goodness  at  its  best, 
in  such  examples  as  George  Herbert  and  Ken  and 
Bishop  Wilson,  seemed  unambitious  and  pale  and  tame, 
of  a  different  order  from  the  Roman,  and  less  closely 
resembling  what  we  read  of  in  the  first  ages  and  in  the 
New  Testament.  Whether  such  views  were  right 


298  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

or  wrong,  exaggerated  or  unbalanced,  accurate  or 
superficial,  they  were  matters  fit  to  interest  grave 
men  ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  they  made 
the  slightest  impression  on  the  authorities  of  the 
University. 

On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Ward,  with  the  greatest 
good  humour,  was  unreservedly  defiant  and  aggressive. 
There  was  something  intolerably  provoking  in  his 
mixture  of  jauntiness  and  seriousness,  his  avowal  of 
utter  personal  unworthiness  and  his  undoubting  cer- 
tainty of  being  in  the  right,  his  downright  charges 
of  heresy  and  his  ungrudging  readiness  to  make 
allowance  for  the  heretics  and  give  them  credit  for 
special  virtues  greater  than  those  of  the  orthodox. 
He  was  not  a  person  to  hide  his  own  views  or  to 
let  others  hide  theirs.  He  lived  in  an  atmosphere  of 
discussion  with  all  around  him,  friends  or  opponents, 
fellows  and  tutors  in  common-rooms,  undergraduates 
after  lecture  or  out  walking.  The  most  amusing, 
the  most  tolerant  man  in  Oxford,  he  had  round  him 
perpetually  some  of  the  cleverest  and  brightest  scholars 
and  thinkers  of  the  place  ;  and  where  he  was,  there 
was  debate,  cross  -  questioning,  pushing  inferences, 
starting  alarming  problems,  beating  out  ideas,  trying 
the  stuff  and  mettle  of  mental  capacity.  Not  always 
with  real  knowledge,  or  a  real  sense  of  fact,  but  always 
rapid  and  impetuous,  taking  in  the  whole  dialectical 
chess-board  at  a  glance,  he  gave  no  quarter,  and  a 
man  found  himself  in  a  perilous  corner  before  he 
perceived  the  drift  of  the  game  ;  but  it  was  to  clear  his 
own  thought,  not — for  he  was  much  too  good-natured 
—to  embarrass  another.  If  the  old  scholastic  dis- 
putations had  been  still  in  use  at  Oxford,  his  triumphs 
would  have  been  signal  and  memorable.  His  success, 


xvii  W.  G.    WARD  299 

compared  with  that  of  other  leaders  of  the  movement, 
in  influencing  life  and  judgment,  was  a  pre-eminently 
intellectual  success  ;  and  it  cut  two  ways.  The  stress 
which  he  laid  on  the  moral  side  of  questions,  his  own 
generosity,  his  earnestness  on  behalf  of  fair  play  and 
good  faith,  elevated  and  purified  intercourse.  But  he 
did  not  always  win  assent  in  proportion  to  his  power  of 
argument.  Abstract  reasoning,  in  matters  with  which 
human  action  is  concerned,  may  be  too  absolute  to  be 
convincing.  It  may  not  leave  sufficient  margin  for  the 
play  and  interference  of  actual  experience.  And  Mr. 
Ward,  having  perfect  confidence  in  his  conclusions, 
rather  liked  to  leave  them  in  a  startling  form,  which 
he  innocently  declared  to  be  manifest  and  inevitable. 
And  so  stories  of  Ward's  audacity  and  paradoxes  flew 
all  over  Oxford,  shocking  and  perplexing  grave  heads 
with  fear  of  they  knew  not  what.  Dr.  Jenkyns,  the 
Master  of  Balliol,  one  of  those  curious  mixtures  of 
pompous  absurdity  with  genuine  shrewdness  which 
used  to  pass  across  the  University  stage,  not  clever 
himself  but  an  unfailing  judge  of  a  clever  man,  as 
a  jockey  might  be  of  a  horse,  liking  Ward  and  proud 
of  him  for  his  cleverness,  was  aghast  at  his  monstrous 
and  unintelligible  language,  and  driven  half  wild  with 
it.  Mr.  Tait,  a  fellow-tutor,  though  living  on  terms  of 
hearty  friendship  with  Ward,  prevailed  on  the  Master 
after  No.  90  to  dismiss  Ward  from  the  office  of 
teaching  mathematics.  It  seemed  a  petty  step  thus 
to  mix  up  theology  with  mathematics,  though  it  was 
not  so  absurd  as  it  looked,  for  Ward  brought  in 
theology  everywhere,  and  discussed  it  when  his 
mathematics  were  done.  But  Ward  accepted  it 
frankly  and  defended  it.  It  was  natural,  he  said,  that 
Tait,  thinking  his  principles  mischievous,  should  wish 


300  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

to    silence    him    as   a   teacher ;    and   their   friendship 
remained  unbroken. 

Mr.  Ward's  theological  position  was  really  a  pro- 
visional one,  though,  at  starting  at  least,  he  would  not 
have  allowed  it.  He  had  no  early  or  traditional 
attachment  to  the  English  Church,  such  as  that  which 
acted  so  strongly  on  the  leaders  of  the  movement : 
but  he  found  himself  a  member  of  it,  and  Mr.  Newman 
had  interpreted  it  to  him.  He  so  accepted  it,  quite 
loyally  and  in  earnest,  as  a  point  of  departure.  But  he 
proceeded  at  once  to  put  "our  Church"  (as  he  called 
it)  on  its  trial,  in  comparison  with  its  own  professions, 
and  with  the  ideal  standard  of  a  Church  which  he  had 
thought  out  for  himself;  and  this  rapidly  led  to  grave 
consequences.  He  accepted  from  authority  which 
satisfied  him  both  intellectually  and  morally  the  main 
scheme  of  Catholic  theology,  as  the  deepest  and  truest 
philosophy  of  religion,  satisfying  at  once  conscience 
and  intellect.  The  Catholic  theology  gave  him,  among 
other  things,  the  idea  and  the  notes  of  the  Church  ; 
with  these,  in  part  at  least,  the  English  Church  agreed  ; 
but  in  other  respects,  and  these  very  serious  ones,  it 
differed  widely  ;  it  seemed  inconsistent  and  anomalous. 
The  English  Church  was  separate  and  isolated  from 
Christendom.  It  was  supposed  to  differ  widely  from 
other  Churches  in  doctrine.  It  admitted  variety  of 
opinion  and  teaching,  even  to  the  point  of  tolerating 
alleged  heresy.  With  such  data  as  these,  he  entered 
on  an  investigation  which  ultimately  came  to  the  ques- 
tion whether  the  English  Church  could  claim  to  be  a 
part  of  the  Church  Catholic.  He  postulated  from  the 
first,  what  he  afterwards  developed  in  the  book  in 
which  his  Anglican  position  culminated, — the  famous 
Ideal, — the  existence  at  some  time  or  another  of  a 


W.  G.   WARD  301 


Catholic  Church  which  not  only  aimed  at,  but  fulfilled 
all  the  conditions  of  a  perfect  Church  in  creed,  com- 
munion, discipline,  and  life.  Of  course  the  English 
and,  as  at  starting  he  held,  the  Roman  Church,  fell  far 
short  of  this  perfection.  But  at  starting,  the  moral 
which  he  drew  was,  not  to  leave  the  English  Church, 
but  to  do  his  best  to  raise  it  up  to  what  it  ought  to  be. 
Whether  he  took  in  all  the  conditions  of  the  problem, 
whether  it  was  not  far  more  complicated  and  difficult 
than  he  supposed,  whether  his  knowledge  of  the  facts 
of  the  case  was  accurate  and  adequate,  whether  he  was 
always  fair  in  his  comparisons  and  judgments,  and 
whether  he  did  not  overlook  elements  of  the  gravest 
importance  in  the  inquiry  ;  whether,  in  fact,  save  for 
certain  strong  and  broad  lines  common  to  the  whole 
historic  Church,  the  reign  of  anomaly,  inconsistency, 
difficulty  did  not  extend  much  farther  over  the  whole 
field  of  debate  than  he  chose  to  admit :  all  this  is  fairly 
open  to  question.  But  within  the  limits  which  he  laid 
down,  and  within  which  he  confined  his  reasonings,  he 
used  his  materials  with  skill  and  force  ;  and  even  those 
who  least  agreed  with  him  and  were  most  sensible  of 
the  strong  and  hardly  disguised  bias  which  so  greatly 
affected  the  value  of  his  judgments,  could  not  deny  the 
frankness  and  the  desire  to  be  fair  and  candid,  with 
which,  as  far  as  intention  went,  he  conducted  his  argu- 
ment. His  first  appearance  as  a  writer  was  in  the 
controversy,  as  has  been  said  before,  on  the  subject  of 
No.  90.  That  tract  had  made  the  well-worn  distinc- 
tion between  what  was  Catholic  and  what  was  distinct- 
ively Roman,  and  had  urged — what  had  been  urged 
over  and  over  again  by  English  divines  —  that  the 
Articles,  in  their  condemnation  of  what  was  Roman, 
were  drawn  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  untouched  what 


302  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

was  unquestionably  Catholic.  They  were  drawn  indeed 
by  Protestants,  but  by  men  who  also  earnestly  pro- 
fessed to  hold  with  the  old  Catholic  doctors  and  dis- 
avowed any  purpose  to  depart  from  their  teaching,  and 
who  further  had  to  meet  the  views  and  gain  the  assent 
of  men  who  were  much  less  Protestant  than  them- 
selves— men  who  were  willing  to  break  with  the  Pope 
and  condemn  the  abuses  associated  with  his  name,  but 
by  no  means  willing  to  break  with  the  old  theology. 
The  Articles  were  the  natural  result  of  a  compromise 
between  two  strong  parties — the  Catholics  agreeing 
that  the  abuses  should  be  condemned,  so  that  the 
Catholic  doctrine  was  not  touched ;  the  Protestants 
insisting  that,  so  that  the  Catholic  doctrine  was  not 
touched,  the  abuses  of  it  should  be  denounced  with 
great  severity :  that  there  should  be  no  question  about 
the  condemnation  of  the  abuses,  and  of  the  system 
which  had  maintained  them.  The  Articles  were  un- 
doubtedly anti- Roman;  that  was  obvious  from  the 
historical  position  of  the  English  Church,  which  in  a 
very  real  sense  was  anti -Roman;  but  were  they  so 
anti- Roman  as  to  exclude  doctrines  which  English 
divines  had  over  and  over  again  maintained  as  Catholic 
and  distinguished  from  Romanism,  but  which  the 
popular  opinion,  at  this  time  or  that,  identified  there- 
with?1 With  flagrant  ignorance — ignorance  of  the 

1  In  dealing  with  the  Articles  either  cise    and    clear,    on   others    they  were 

as  a  test  or  as  a  text-book,  this  ques-  vague   and   imperfect.     The  first   five 

tion  was  manifestly  both  an  honest  and  Articles  left  no  room  for  doubt.     When 

a  reasonable  one.     As  a  test,  and  there-  the  compilers  came  to  the  controversies 

fore    penal,    they   must    be    construed  of  their  day,  for  all  their  strong  lan- 

strictly  ;    like   judicial    decisions,   they  guage,  they  left  all  kinds  of  questions 

only  ruled  as  much  as  was  necessary,  unanswered.     For  instance,  they  actu- 

and  in  the  wide  field  of  theology  con-  ally   left   unnoticed   the   primacy,    and 

fined  themselves  to  the  points  at  issue  much  more  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope, 

at  the  moment.      And  as  a  text-book  They    condemned    the    "sacrifices    of 

for    instruction,    it    was    obvious    that  Masses" — did  they  condemn  the  ancient 

while  on  some  points  they  were   pre-  and  universal  doctrine  of  a  Eucharistic 


W.  G.   WARD  303 


history  of  thought  and  teaching  in  the  English  Church, 
ignorance  far  more  inexcusable  of  the  state  of  parties 
and  their  several  notorious  difficulties  in  relation  to  the 
various  formularies  of  the  Church,  it  was  maintained 
on  the  other  side  that  the  "Articles  construed  by  them- 
selves "  left  no  doubt  that  they  were  not  only  anti- 
Roman  but  anti-Catholic,  and  that  nothing  but  the 
grossest  dishonesty  and  immorality  could  allow  any 
doubt  on  the  subject. 

Neither  estimate  was  logical  enough  to  satisfy  Mr. 
Ward.  The  charge  of  insincerity,  he  retorted  with 
great  effect  on  those  who  made  it :  if  words  meant 
anything,  the  Ordination  Service,  the  Visitation  Ser- 
vice, and  the  Baptismal  Service  were  far  greater  diffi- 
culties to  Evangelicals,  and  to  Latitudinarians  like 
Whately  and  Hampden,  than  the  words  of  any  Article 
could  be  to  Catholics  ;  and  there  was  besides  the  tone 
of  the  whole  Prayer  Book,  intelligible,  congenial,  on 
Catholic  assumptions,  and  on  no  other.  But  as  to  the 
Articles  themselves,  he  was  indisposed  to  accept  the 
defence  made  for  them.  He  criticised  indeed  with 
acuteness  and  severity  the  attempt  to  make  the  loose 
language  of  many  of  them  intolerant  of  primitive  doc- 
trine ;  but  he  frankly  accepted  the  allegation  that  apart 
from  this  or  that  explanation,  their  general  look,  as 
regards  later  controversies,  was  visibly  against,  not 
only  Roman  doctrines  or  Roman  abuses,  but  that 
whole  system  of  principles  and  mode  of  viewing 

sacrifice?    They  condemned  the  Romish  questions  could  not  be  foreclosed,  unless 

doctrine  of  Purgatory,  with  its  popular  on  the  assumption  that  there  was  no 

tenet  of  material  fire — did  that  exclude  doctrine  on  such  points  which  could  be 

every  doctrine  of  purgation  after  death?  called  Catholic  except  the  Roman.     The 

They  condemned  Transubstantiation —  inquiry  was  not  new ;  and  divines  so 

did  they  condemn  the  Real  Presence  ?  stoutly  anti-Roman  as  Dr.  Hook  and 

They  condemned  a  great  popular  sys-  Mr.    W.     Palmer    of    Worcester    had 

tern — did  they  condemn  that  of  which  answered  it  substantially  in  the  same 

it  was  a  corruption  and  travesty?    These  sense  as  Mr.  Newman  in  No.  90. 


304  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

religion  which  he  called  Catholic.  They  were,  he 
said,  patient  of  a  Catholic  meaning,  but  ambitious  of 
a  Protestant  meaning ;  whatever  their  logic  was,  their 
rhetoric  was  Protestant.  It  was  just  possible,  but  not 
more,  for  a  Catholic  to  subscribe  to  them.  But  they 
were  the  creation  and  the  legacy  of  a  bad  age,  and 
though  they  had  not  extinguished  Catholic  teaching  and 
Catholic  belief  in  the  English  Church,  they  had  been  a 
serious  hindrance  to  it,  and  a  support  to  its  opponents. 
This  was  going  beyond  the  position  of  No.  90. 
No.  90  had  made  light  of  the  difficulties  of  the  Articles. 

That  there  are  real  difficulties  to  a  Catholic  Christian  in  the 
ecclesiastical  position  of  our  Church  at  this  day,  no  one  can  deny ; 
but  the  statements  of  the  Articles  are  not  in  the  number.  Our 
present  scope  is  merely  to  show  that,  while  our  Prayer  Book  is 
acknowledged  on  all  hands  to  be  of  Catholic  origin,  our  Articles 
also — the  offspring  of  an  uncatholic  age — are,  through  God's  good 
providence,  to  say  the  least,  not  uncatholic,  and  may  be  subscribed 
by  those  who  aim  at  being  Catholic  in  heart  and  doctrine. 

Mr.  Ward  not  only  went  .beyond  this  position,  but 
in  the  teeth  of  these  statements  ;  and  he  gave  a  new 
aspect  and  new  issues  to  the  whole  controversy.  The 
Articles,  to  him,  were  a  difficulty,  which  they  were 
not  to  the  writer  of  No.  oo,  or  to  Dr.  Pusey,  or  to 
Mr.  Keble.  To  him  they  were  not  only  the  "off- 
spring of  an  uncatholic  age,"  but  in  themselves 
uncatholic  ;  and  his  answer  to  the  charge  of  dishonest 
subscription  was,  not  that  the  Articles  "in  their 
natural  meaning  are  Catholic,"1  but  that  the  system 
of  the  English  Church  is  a  compromise  between  what 
is  Catholic  and  what  is  Protestant,  and  that  the 
Protestant  parties  in  it  are  involved  in  even  greater 
difficulties,  in  relation  to  subscription  and  use  of  its 

1  W.  G.  Ward,  The  Ideal  of  a  Christian  Church,  p.  478. 


xvii  IV.  G.   WARD  305 

formularies,  than  the  Catholic.  He  admitted  that  he 
did  evade  the  spirit,  but  accepted  the  "statements  of 
the  Articles,"  maintaining  that  this  was  the  intention 
of  their  original  sanctioners.  With  characteristic  bold- 
ness, inventing  a  phrase  which  has  become  famous,  he 
wrote  :  "Our  twelfth  Article  is  as  plain  as  words  can 
make  it  on  the  Evangelical  side ;  of  course  I  think  its 
natural  meaning  may  be  explained  away,  for  I  subscribe 
it  myself  in  a  non-natural  sense  "  :  J  but  he  showed  that 
Evangelicals,  high  church  Anglicans,  and  Latitudinarians 
were  equally  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  explanations, 
which  to  all  but  themselves  were  unsatisfactory. 

But  he  went  a  step  beyond  this.  Hitherto  the 
distinction  had  been  uniformly  insisted  upon  between 
what  was  Catholic  and  what  was  Roman ;  between 
what  was  witnessed  to  by  the  primitive  and  the  un- 
divided Church,  and  what  had  been  developed  beyond 
that  in  the  Schools,  and  by  the  definitions  and  decisions 
of  Rome,  and  in  the  enormous  mass  of  its  post- Reforma- 
tion theology,  at  once  so  comprehensive,  and  so  minute 
in  application.  This  distinction  was  the  foundation 
of  what  was,  characteristically,  Anglican  theology,  from 
Hooker  downwards.  This  distinction,  at  least  for  all 
important  purposes,  Mr.  Ward  gradually  gave  up.  It 
was  to  a  certain  degree  recognised  in  his  early  con- 
troversy about  No.  90 ;  but  it  gradually  grew  fainter 
till  at  last  it  avowedly  disappeared.  The  Anglican 
writers  had  drawn  their  ideas  and  their  inspiration 
from  the  Fathers ;  the  Fathers  lived  long  ago,  and 
the  teaching  drawn  from  them,  however  spiritual  and 
lofty,  wanted  the  modern  look,  and  seemed  to  recognise 
insufficiently  modern  needs.  The  Roman  applications 
of  the  same  principles  were  definite  and  practical,  and 

1   The  Ideal,  etc.,  p.  479. 
X 


306  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

Mr.  Ward's  mind,  essentially  one  of  his  own  century, 
and  little  alive  to  what  touched  more  imaginative 
and  sensitive  minds,  turned  at  once  to  Roman  sources 
for  the  interpretation  of  what  was  Catholic.  In  the 
British  Critic,  and  still  more  in  the  remarkable  volume 
in  which  his  Oxford  controversies  culminated,  the 
substitution  of  Roman  for  the  old  conception  of 
Catholic  appears,  and  the  absolute  identification  of 
Roman  with  Catholic.  Roman  authorities  become 
more  and  more  the  measure  and  rule  of  what  is 
Catholic.  They  belong  to  the  present  in  a  way  in 
which  the  older  fountains  of  teaching  do  not ;  in  the 
recognised  teaching  of  the  Latin  Church,  they  have 
taken  their  place  and  superseded  them. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Mr.  Ward  that  his  chief 
quarrel  with  the  Articles  was  not  about  the  Sacraments, 
not  about  their  language  on  alleged  Roman  errors,  but 
about  the  doctrine  of  grace,  the  relation  of  the  soul  of 
man  to  the  law,  the  forgiveness,  the  holiness  of  God, 
—the  doctrine,  that  is,  in  all  its  bearings,  of  justifica- 
tion. Mr.  Newman  had  examined  this  doctrine  and 
the  various  language  held  about  it  with  great  care, 
very  firmly  but  very  temperately,  and  had  attempted 
to  reconcile  with  each  other  all  but  the  extreme 
Lutheran  statements.  It  was,  he  said,  among  really 
religious  men,  a  question  of  words.  He  had  recog- 
nised the  faulty  state  of  things  in  the  pre- Reformation 
Church,  the  faulty  ideas  about  forgiveness,  merit, 
grace,  and  works,  from  which  the  Protestant  language 
was  a  reaction,  natural,  if  often  excessive ;  and  in  the 
English  authoritative  form  of  this  language,  he  had 
found  nothing  but  what  was  perfectly  capable  of  a 
sound  and  true  meaning.  From  the  first,  Mr.  Ward's 
judgment  was  far  more  severe  than  this.  To  him, 


xvn  W.  G.   WARD  307 

the  whole  structure  of  the  Articles  on  Justification  and 
the  doctrines  connected  with  it  seemed  based  on  the 
Lutheran  theory,  and  for  this  theory,  as  fundamentally 
and  hopelessly  immoral,  he  could  not  find  words  suffi- 
ciently expressive  of  detestation  and  loathing.  For  the 
basis  of  his  own  theory  of  religious  knowledge  was  a 
moral  basis  ;  men  came  to  the  knowledge  of  religious 
truth  primarily  not  by  the  intellect,  but  by  absolute 
and  unfailing  loyalty  to  conscience  and  moral  light ; 
and  a  doctrine  which  separated  faith  from  morality 
and  holiness,  which  made  man's  highest  good  and  his 
acceptance  with  God  independent  of  what  he  was  as 
a  moral  agent,  which  relegated  the  realities  of  moral 
discipline  and  goodness  to  a  secondary  and  subordinate 
place, — as  a  mere  sequel  to  follow,  almost  mechanically 
and  of  course,  on  an  act  or  feeling  which  had  nothing 
moral  in  it, — which  substituted  a  fictitious  and  imputed 
righteousness  for  an  inherent  and  infused  and  real 
one,  seemed  to  him  to  confound  the  eternal  founda- 
tions of  right  and  wrong,  and  to  be  a  blasphemy 
against  all  that  was  true  and  sacred  in  religion. 

Of  the  Lutheran  doctrine l  of  justification,  and  the  principle  of 
private  judgment,  I  have  argued  that,  in  their  abstract  nature  and 
necessary  tendency,  they  sink  below  atheism  itself.  ...  A  religious 

1  It  is  curious,  and  characteristic  of  was  to  Calvin  as  Carlyle  to  J.  S.  Mill 
the  unhistorical  quality  of  Mr.  Ward's  or  Herbert  Spencer ;  he  defied  system, 
mind,  that  his  whole  hostility  should  But  Luther  had  burst  into  outrageous 
have  been  concentrated  on  Luther  and  paradoxes,  which  fastened  on  Mr. 
Lutheranism  —  on  Luther,  the  en-  Ward's  imagination. — Yet  outrageous 
thusiastic,  declamatory,  unsystematic  language  is  not  always  the  most 
denouncer  of  practical  abuses,  with  dangerous.  Nobody  would  really  find 
his  strong  attachments  to  portions  of  a  provocation  to  sin,  or  an  excuse  for 
orthodoxy,  rather  than  on  Calvin,  with  it,  in  Luther's  Pecca  fortiter  any  more 
his  cold  love  of  power,  and  the  iron  than  in  Escobar's  ridiculous  casuistry, 
consistency  and  strength  of  his  logical  There  may  be  much  more  mischief 
anti-Catholic  system,  which  has  really  in  the  delicate  unrealities  of  a  fashion- 
lived  and  moulded  Protestantism,  while  able  preacher,  or  in  many  a  smooth 
Lutheranism  as  a  religion  has  passed  sentimental  treatise  on  the  religious 
into  'countless  different  forms.  Luther  affections. 


3o8  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

person  who  shall  be  sufficiently  clear-headed  to  understand  the 
meaning  of  words,  is  warranted  in  rejecting  Lutheranism  on  the 
very  same  grounds  which  would  induce  him  to  reject  atheism,  viz. 
as  being  the  contradiction  of  truths  which  he  feels  on  most  certain 
grounds  to  be  first  principles. l 

There  is  nothing  which  he  looks  back  on  with  so 
much  satisfaction  in  his  writings  as  on  this,  that  he  has 
"ventured  to  characterise  that  hateful  and  fearful  type 
of  Antichrist  in  terms  not  wholly  inadequate  to  its 
prodigious  demerits. ": 

Mr.  Ward  had  started  with  a  very  definite  idea  of 
the  Church  and  of  its  notes  and  tests.  It  was  obvious 
that  the  Anglican  Church — and  so,  it  was  thought, 
the  Roman — failed  to  satisfy  these  notes  in  their 
completeness  ;  but  it  seemed,  at  least  at  first,  to  satisfy 
some  of  them,  and  to  do  this  so  remarkably,  and  in 
such  strong  contrast  to  other  religious  bodies,  that  in 
England  at  all  events  it  seemed  the  true  representa- 
tive and  branch  of  the  Church  Catholic ;  and  the  duty 
of  adhering  to  it  and  serving  it  was  fully  recognised, 
even  by  those  who  most  felt  its  apparent  departure  from 
the  more  Catholic  principles  and  temper  preserved 
in  many  points  by  the  Roman  Church.  From  this 
point  of  view  Mr.  Ward  avowedly  began.  But,  the 
position  gradually  gave  way  before  his  relentless  and 
dissolving  logic.  The  whole  course  of  his  writing  in 
the  British  Critic  may  be  said  to  have  consisted  in  a 
prolonged  and  disparaging  comparison  of  the  English 
Church,  in  theory,  in  doctrine,  in  moral  and  devotional 
temper,  in  discipline  of  character,  in  education,  in  its 
public  and  authoritative  tone  in  regard  to  social, 
political,  and  moral  questions,  and  in  the  type  and 
standard  of  its  clergy,  with  those  of  the  Catholic 

1   The 'ideal,  etc.,  pp.  587,  305.  2  Ibid.  p.  305. 


W.  G.   WARD  309 


Church,  which  to  him  was  represented  by  the  mediaeval 
and  later  Roman  Church.  And  in  the  general  result, 
and  in  all  important  matters,  the  comparison  became 
more  and  more  fatally  disadvantageous  to  the  English 
Church.  In  the  perplexing  condition  of  Christendom, 
it  had  just  enough  good  and  promise  to  justify  those 
who  had  been  brought  up  in  it  remaining  where  they 
were,  as  long  as  they  saw  any  prospect  of  improving 
it,  and  till  they  were  driven  out.  That  was  a  duty — 
uncomfortable  and  thankless  as  it  was,  and  open  to  any 
amount  of  misconstruction  and  misrepresentation — 
which  they  owed  to  their  brethren,  and  to  the  Lord  of 
the  Church.  But  it  involved  plain  speaking  and  its 
consequences;  and  Mr.  Ward  never  shrank  from  either. 
Most  people,  looking  back,  would  probably  agree, 
whatever  their  general  judgment  on  these  matters, 
and  whatever  they  may  think  of  Mr.  Ward's  case,  that 
he  was,  at  the  time  at  least,  the  most  unpersuasive 
of  writers.  Considering  his  great  acuteness,  and  the 
frequent  originality  of  his  remarks — considering,  further, 
his  moral  earnestness,  and  the  place  which  the  moral 
aspects  of  things  occupy  in  his  thoughts,  this  is  re- 
markable ;  but  so  it  is.  In  the  first  place,  in  dealing 
with  these  eventful  questions,  which  came  home  with 
such  awful  force  to  thousands  of  awakened  minds  and 
consciences,  full  of  hope  and  full  of  fear,  there  was  an 
entire  and  ostentatious  want  of  sympathy  with  all  that 
was  characteristically  English  in  matters  of  religion. 
This  arose  partly  from  his  deep  dislike  to  habits,  very 
marked  in  Englishmen,  but  not  peculiar  to  them,  of 
self-satisfaction  and  national  self-glorification  ;  but  it 
drove  him  into  a  welcoming  of  opposite  foreign  ways, 
of  which  he  really  knew  little,  except  superficially. 
Next,  his  boundless  confidence  in  the  accuracy  of  his 


3io  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

logical  processes  led  him  to  habits  of  extreme  and 
absolute  statement,  which  to  those  who  did  not  agree 
with  him,  and  also  to  some  who  did,  bore  on  their  face 
the  character  of  over-statement,  exaggeration,  extrava- 
gance, not  redeemed  by  an  occasional  and  somewhat 
ostentatious  candour,  often  at  the  expense  of  his  own 
side  and  in  favour  of  opponents  to  whom  he  could  afford 
to  be  frank.  And  further,  while  to  the  English  Church 
he  was  merciless  in  the  searching  severity  of  his 
judgment,  he  seemed  to  be  blind  to  the  whole  condi- 
tion of  things  to  which  she,  as  well  as  her  rival,  had 
for  the  last  three  centuries  been  subjected,  and  in 
which  she  had  played  a  part  at  least  as  important  for 
Christian  faith  as  that  sustained  by  any  portion  of 
Christendom  ;  blind  to  all  her  special  and  characteristic 
excellences,  where  these  did  not  fit  the  pattern  of  the 
continental  types  (obviously,  in  countless  instances, 
matters  of  national  and  local  character  and  habits) ; 
blind  to  the  enormous  difficulties  in  which  the  political 
game  of  her  Roman  opponents  had  placed  her ;  blind 
to  the  fact  that,  judged  with  the  same  adverse  bias  and 
prepossessions,  the  same  unsparing  rigour,  the  same 
refusal  to  give  real  weight  to  what  was  good,  on  the 
ground  that  it  was  mixed  with  something  lower,  the 
Roman  Church  would  show  just  as  much  deflection 
from  the  ideal  as  the  English.  Indeed,  he  would  have 
done  a  great  service — people  would  have  been  far 
more  disposed  to  attend  to  his  really  interesting,  and, 
to  English  readers,  novel,  proofs  of  the  moral  and  de- 
votional character  of  the  Roman  popular  discipline,  if 
he  had  not  been  so  unfair  on  the  English  :  if  he  had 
not  ignored  the  plain  fact  that  just  such  a  picture  as 
he  gave  of  the  English  Church,  as  failing  in  required 
notes,  might  be  found  of  the  Roman  before  the  Re- 


W.  G.   WARD  311 


formation,  say  in  the  writings  of  Gerson,  and  in  our 
own  days  in  those  of  Rosmini.  Mr.  Ward,  if  any  one, 
appealed  to  fair  judgment  ;  and  to  this  fair  judgment 
he  presented  allegations  on  the  face  of  them  violent 
and  monstrous.  The  English  Church,  according  to 
him,  was  in  the  anomalous  position  of  being  "gifted 
with  the  power  of  dispensing  sacramental  grace,"  l  and 
yet,  at  the  same  time,  "  wholly  destitute  of  external 
notes,  and  wholly  indefensible,  as  to  her  position,  by 
external,  historical,  ecclesiastical  arguments  "  :  and,  he 
for  his  part  declares,  correcting  Mr.  Newman,  who 
speaks  of  "  outward  notes  as  partly  gone  and  partly 
going,"  that  he  is  "wholly  unable  to  discern  the  out- 
ward notes  of  which  Mr.  Newman  speaks,  during  any 
part  of  the  last  three  hundred  years."  He  might  as 
well  have  said  at  once  that  she  did  not  exist,  if  the 
outward  aspects  of  a  Church — orders,  creeds,  sacra- 
ments, and,  in  some  degree  at  any  rate,  preaching  and 
witnessing  for  righteousness — are  not  some  of  the  "out- 
ward notes  "  of  a  Church.  "  Should  the  pure  light  of 
the  Gospel  be  ever  restored  to  this  benighted  land"~ 
he  writes,  at  the  beginning,  as  the  last  extract  was 
written  at  the  end,  of  his  controversial  career  at  Oxford. 
Is  not  such  writing  as  if  he  wished  to  emulate  in  a 
reverse  sense  the  folly  and  falsehood  of  those  who 
spoke  of  English  Protestants  having  a  monopoly  of 
the  Gospel  ?  He  was  unpersuasive,  he  irritated  and 
repelled,  in  spite  of  his  wish  to  be  fair  and  candid,  in 
spite  of  having  so  much  to  teach,  in  spite  of  such 
vigour  of  statement  and  argument,  because  on  the  face 
of  all  his  writings  he  was  so  extravagantly  one-sided, 
so  incapable  of  an  equitable  view,  so  much  a  slave  to 
the  unreality  of  extremes. 

1  Ideal,  p.  286.  2  British  Critic,  October  1841,  p.  340. 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

THE    IDEAL    OF    A    CHRISTIAN    CHURCH 

No.  90,  with  the  explanations  of  it  given  by  Mr.  New- 
man and  the  other  leaders  of  the  movement,  might  have 
raised  an  important  and  not  very  easy  question,  but 
one  in  no  way  different  from  the  general  character  of 
the  matters  in  debate  in  the  theological  controversy  of 
the  time.  But  No.  90,  with  the  comments  on  it  of 
Mr.  Ward,  was  quite  another  matter,  and  finally  broke 
up  the  party  of  the  movement.  It  was  one  thing  to 
show  how  much  there  is  in  common  between  England 
and  Rome,  and  quite  another  to  argue  that  there  is  no 
difference.  Mr.  Ward's  refusal  to  allow  a  reasonable 
and  a  Catholic  interpretation  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
Articles  on  Justification,  though  such  an  understanding 
of  it  had  not  only  been  maintained  by  Bishop  Bull  and 
the  later  orthodox  divines,  but  was  impressed  on  all 
the  popular  books  of  devotion,  such  as  the  Whole 
Duty  of  Man  and  Bishop  Wilson's  Sacra  Privata  ; 
and  along  with  this,  the  extreme  claim  to  hold  com- 
patible with  the  Articles  the  "whole  cycle  of  Roman 
doctrine,"  introduced  entirely  new  conditions  into  the 
whole  question.  Non  hcec  in  fcedera  was  the  natural 
reflection  of  numbers  of  those  who  most  sympathised 
with  the  Tractarian  school.  The  English  Church 


CHAP,  xvin    THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  313 

might  have  many  shortcomings  and  want  many  im- 
provements ;  but  after  all  she  had  something  to  say 
for  herself  in  her  quarrel  with  Rome  ;  and  the  witness 
of  experience  for  fifteen  hundred  years  must  be  not 
merely  qualified  and  corrected,  but  absolutely  wiped 
out,  if  the  allegation  were  to  be  accepted  that  Rome 
was  blameless  in  all  that  quarrel,  and  had  no  part  in 
bringing  about  the  confusions  of  Christendom.  And 
this  contention  was  more  and  more  enforced  in  Mr. 
Ward's  articles  in  the  British  Critic — enforced,  more 
effectively  than  by  direct  statement,  by  continual 
and  passing  assumption  and  implication.  They  were 
papers  of  considerable  power  and  acuteness,  and  of 
great  earnestness  in  their  constant  appeal  to  the  moral 
criteria  of  truth  ;  though  Mr.  Ward  was  not  then  at 
his  best  as  a  writer,  and  they  were  in  composition 
heavy,  diffuse,  monotonous,  and  wearisome.  But  the 
attitude  of  deep  depreciation,  steady,  systematic,  un- 
relieved, in  regard  to  that  which  ought,  if  acknowledged 
at  all,  to  deserve  the  highest  reverence  among  all 
things  on  earth,  in  regard  to  an  institution  which,  with 
whatever  faults,  he  himself  in  words  still  recognised  as 
the  Church  of  God,  was  an  indefensible  and  an  un- 
wholesome paradox.  The  analogy  is  a  commonly 
accepted  one  between  the  Church  and  the  family. 
How  could  any  household  go  on  in  which  there  was  at 
work  an  animus  of  unceasing  and  relentless,  though 
possibly  too  just  criticism,  on  its  characteristic  and 
perhaps  serious  faults  ;  and  of  comparisons,  also  pos- 
sibly most  just,  with  the  better  ways  of  other  families  ? 
It  might  be  the  honest  desire  of  reform  and  improve- 
ment ;  but  charity,  patience,  equitableness  are  virtues 
of  men  in  society,  as  well  as  strict  justice  and  the 
desire  of  improvement.  In  the  case  of  the  family, 


314  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

such  action  could  only  lead  to  daily  misery  and  the 
wasting  and  dying  out  of  home  affections.  In  the 
case  of  a  Church,  it  must  come  to  the  sundering  of 
ties  which  ought  no  longer  to  bind.  Mr.  Ward  all 
along  insisted  that  there  was  no  necessity  for  looking 
forward  to  such  an  event.  He  wished  to  raise,  purify, 
reform  the  Church  in  which  Providence  had  placed 
him  ;  utterly  dissatisfied  as  he  was  with  it,  intellectually 
and  morally,  convinced  more  and  more  that  it  was 
wrong,  dismally,  fearfully  wrong,  it  was  his  duty,  he 
thought,  to  abide  in  it  without  looking  to  consequences  ; 
but  it  was  also  his  duty  to  shake  the  faith  of  any  one 
he  could  in  its  present  claims  and  working,  and  to 
hold  up  an  incomparably  purer  model  of  truth  and 
holiness.  That  his  purpose  was  what  he  considered 
real  reform,  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt,  though  he 
chose  to  shut  his  eyes  to  what  must  come  of  it.  The 
position  was  an  unnatural  one,  but  he  had  great  faith 
in  his  own  well-fenced  logical  creations,  and  defied  the 
objections  of  a  homelier  common  sense.  He  was  not 
content  to  wait  in  silence  the  slow  and  sad  changes  of 
old  convictions,  the  painful  decay  and  disappearance  of 
long-cherished  ties.  His  mind  was  too  active,  restless, 
unreserved.  To  the  last  he  persisted  in  forcing  on  the 
world,  professedly  to  influence  it,  really  to  defy  it,  the 
most  violent  assertions  which  he  could  formulate  of  the 
most  paradoxical  claims  on  friends  and  opponents  which 
had  ever  been  made. 

Mr.  Ward's  influence  was  felt  also  in  another  way  ; 
though  here  it  is  not  easy  to  measure  the  degree  of  its 
force.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  appealing  to  Mr.  New- 
man to  pronounce  on  the  soundness  of  his  principles 
and  inferences,  with  the  view  of  getting  Mr.  Newman's 
sanction  for  them  against  more  timid  or  more  dissatis- 


xvni  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  315 

fied  friends  ;  and  he  would  come  down  with  great  glee 
on  objectors  to  some  new  and  startling  position,  with 
the  reply,  "  Newman  says  so."  Every  one  knows  from 
the  Apologia  what  was  Mr.  Newman's  state  of  mind 
after  1841 — a  state  of  perplexity,  distress,  anxiety  ;  he 
was  moving  undoubtedly  in  one  direction,  but  moving 
slowly,  painfully,  reluctantly,  intermittently,  with  views 
sometimes  clear,  sometimes  clouded,  of  that  terribly 
complicated  problem  the  answer  to  which  was  full  of 
such  consequences  to  himself  and  to  others.  No  one 
ever  felt  more  keenly  that  it  was  no  mere  affair  of 
dexterous  or  brilliant  logic  ;  if  logic  could  have  settled 
it,  the  question  would  never  have  arisen.  But  in  this 
fevered  state,  with  mind,  soul,  heart  all  torn  and  dis- 
tracted by  the  tremendous  responsibilities  pressing  on 
him,  wishing  above  everything  to  be  quiet,  to  be  silent, 
at  least  not  to  speak  except  at  his  own  times  and  when 
he  saw  the  occasion,  he  had,  besides  bearing  his  own 
difficulties,  to  return  off-hand  and  at  the  moment  some 
response  to  questions  which  he  had  not  framed,  which 
he  did  not  care  for,  on  which  he  felt  no  call  to  pro- 
nounce, which  he  was  not  perhaps  yet  ready  to  face, 
and  to  answer  which  he  must  commit  himself  irrevoc- 
ably and  publicly  to  more  than  he  was  prepared  for. 
Every  one  is  familiar  with  the  proverbial  distribution 
of  parts  in  the  asking  and  the  answering  of  questions  ; 
but  when  the  asker  is  no  fool,  but  one  of  the  sharpest- 
witted  of  mankind,  asking  with  little  consideration  for 
the  condition  or  the  wishes  of  the  answerer,  with  great 
power  to  force  the  answer  he  wants,  and  with  no  great 
tenderness  in  the  use  he  makes  of  it,  the  situation 
becomes  a  trying  one.  Mr.  Ward  was  continually 
forcing  on  Mr.  Newman  so-called  irresistible  infer- 
ences :  "If  you  say  so  and  so,  surely  you  must  also 


316  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

say  something  more?"  Avowedly  ignorant  of  facts 
and  depending  for  them  on  others,  he  was  only  con- 
cerned with  logical  consistency.  And  accordingly  Mr. 
Newman,  with  whom  producible  logical  consistency 
was  indeed  a  great  thing,  but  with  whom  it  was  very 
far  from  being  everything,  had  continually  to  accept 
conclusions  which  he  would  rather  have  kept  in  abey- 
ance, to  make  admissions  which  were  used  without 
their  qualifications,  to  push  on  and  sanction  extreme 
ideas  which  he  himself  shrank  from  because  they  were 
extreme.  But  it  was  all  over  with  his  command  of 
time,  his  liberty  to  make  up  his  mind  slowly  on  the 
great  decision.  He  had  to  go  at  Mr.  Ward's  pace, 
and  not  his  own.  He  had  to  take  Mr.  Ward's  ques- 
tions, not  when  he  wanted  to  have  them  and  at  his 
own  time,  but  at  Mr.  Ward's.  No  one  can  tell  how 
much  this  state  of  things  affected  the  working  of  Mr. 
Newman's  mind  in  that  pause  of  hesitation  before  the 
final  step  ;  how  far  it  accelerated  the  view  which  he 
ultimately  took  of  his  position.  No  one  can  tell,  for 
many  other  influences  were  mixed  up  with  this  one. 
But  there  is  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Newman  felt  the  annoy- 
ance and  the  unfairness  of  this  perpetual  questioning 
for  the  benefit  of  Mr.  Ward's  theories,  and  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that,  in  effect,  it  drove  him  onwards 
and  cut  short  his  time  of  waiting.  Engineers  tell  us 
that,  in  the  case  of  a  ship  rolling  in  a  sea-way,  when 
the  periodic  times  of  the  ship's  roll  coincide  with  those 
of  the  undulations  of  the  waves,  a  condition  of  things 
arises  highly  dangerous  to  the  ship's  stability.  So  the 
agitations  of  Mr.  Newman's  mind  were  reinforced  by 

o  * 

the  impulses  of  Mr.  Ward's.1 

1  A  pencilled  note  indicates  that  this  illustration  was  suggested  by  experiments 
in  naval  engineering  carried  on  at  one  time  by  Mr.  W.  Froude. 


xviii  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  317 

But  the  great  question  between  England  and  Rome 
was  not  the  only  matter  which  engaged  Mr.  Ward's 
active  mind.  In  the  course  of  his  articles  in  the 
British  Critic  he  endeavoured  to  develop  in  large 
outlines  a  philosophy  of  religious  belief.  Restless  on 
all  matters  without  a  theory,  he  felt  the  need  of  a 
theory  of  the  true  method  of  reaching,  verifying,  and 
judging  of  religious  truth  :  it  seemed  to  him  necessary 
especially  to  a  popular  religion,  such  as  Christianity 
claimed  to  be  ;  and  it  was  not  the  least  of  the  points 
on  which  he  congratulated  himself  that  he  had  worked 
out  a  view  which  extended  greatly  the  province  and 
office  of  conscience,  and  of  fidelity  to  it,  and  greatly 
narrowed  the  province  and  office  of  the  mere  intellect 
in  the  case  of  the  great  mass  of  mankind.  The  Oxford 
writers  had  all  along  laid  stress  on  the  paramount 
necessity  of  the  single  eye  and  disciplined  heart  in 
accepting  or  judging  religion  ;  moral  subjects  could 
be  only  appreciated  by  moral  experience ;  purity, 
reverence,  humility  were  as  essential  in  such  questions 
as  zeal,  industry,  truthfulness,  honesty ;  religious  truth 
is  a  gift  as  well  as  a  conquest ;  and  they  dwelt  on  the 
great  maxims  of  the  New  Testament :  "  To  him  that 
hath  shall  be  given  ";  "  If  any  man  will  do  the  will  of 
the  Father,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine."  But  though 
Mr.  Newman  especially  had  thrown  out  deep  and 
illuminating  thoughts  on  this  difficult  question,  it  had 
not  been  treated  systematically  ;  and  this  treatment 
Mr.  Ward  attempted  to  give  to  it.  It  was  a  striking 
and  powerful  effort,  full  of  keen  insight  into  human 
experience  and  acute  observations  on  its  real  laws  and 
conditions ;  but  on  the  face  of  it,  it  was  laboured  and 
strained ;  it  chose  its  own  ground,  and  passed  un- 
noticed neighbouring  regions  under  different  condi- 


318  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

tions ;  it  left  undealt  with  the  infinite  variety  of  cir- 
cumstances, history,  capacities,  natural  temperament, 
and  those  unexplored  depths  of  will  and  character, 
affecting  choice  and  judgment,  the  realities  of  which 
have  been  brought  home  to  us  by  our  later  ethical 
literature.  Up  to  a  certain  point  his  task  was  easy. 
It  is  easy  to  say  that  a  bad  life,  a  rebellious  temper, 
a  selfish  spirit  are  hopeless  disqualifications  for  judg- 
ing spiritual  things  ;  that  we  must  take  something  for 
granted  in  learning  any  truths  whatever ;  that  men 
must  act  as  moral  creatures  to  attain  insight  into 
moral  truths,  to  realise  and  grasp  them  as  things,  and 
not  abstractions  and  words.  But  then  came  the 
questions — What  is  that  moral  training,  which,  in  the 
case  of  the  good  heart,  will  be  practically  infallible  in 
leading  into  truth  ?  And  what  is  that  type  of  character, 
of  saintliness,  which  gives  authority  which  we  cannot 
do  wrong  in  following ;  where,  if  question  and  con- 
troversy arise,  is  the  common  measure  binding  on 
both  sides ;  and  can  even  the  saints,  with  their  im- 
mense variations  and  apparent  mixtures  and  failings, 
furnish  that  type  ?  And  next,  where,  in  the  investiga- 
tions which  may  be  endlessly  diversified,  does  intellect 
properly  come  in  and  give  its  help  ?  For  come  in 
somewhere,  of  course  it  must ;  and  the  conspicuous 
dominance  of  the  intellectual  element  in  Mr.  Ward's 
treatment  of  the  subject  is  palpable  on  the  face  of  it. 
His  attempt  is  to  make  out  a  theory  of  the  reasonable- 
ness of  unproducible,  because  unanalysed,  reasons ; 
reasons  which,  though  the  individual  cannot  state 
them,  may  be  as  real  and  as  legitimately  active  as 
the  obscure  rays  of  the  spectrum.  But  though  the 
discussion  in  Mr.  Ward's  hands  was  suggestive  of 
much,  though  he  might  expose  the  superciliousness  of 


xvin  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  319 

Whately  or  the  shallowness  of  Mr.  Goode,  and  show 
himself  no  unequal  antagonist  to  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill,  it  left 
great  difficulties  unanswered,  and  it  had  too  much  the 
appearance  of  being  directed  to  a  particular  end,  that 
of  guarding  the  Catholic  view  of  a  popular  religion 
from  formidable  objections. 

The  moral  side  of  religion  had  been  from  the  first 
a  prominent  subject  in  the  teaching  of  the  movement. 
Its  protests  had  been  earnest  and  constant  against 
intellectual  self-sufficiency,  and  the  notion  that  mere 
shrewdness  and  cleverness  were  competent  judges  of 
Christian  truth,  or  that  soundness  of  judgment  in 
religious  matters  was  compatible  with  arrogance  or 
an  imperfect  moral  standard ;  and  it  revolted  against 
the  conventional  and  inconsistent  severity  of  Puritan- 
ism, which  was  shocked  at  dancing  but  indulged  freely 
in  good  dinners,  and  was  ostentatious  in  using  the 
phrases  of  spiritual  life  and  in  marking  a  separation 
from  the  world,  while  it  surrounded  itself  with  all  the 
luxuries  of  modern  inventiveness.  But  this  moral 
teaching  was  confined  to  the  statement  of  principles, 
and  it  was  carried  out  in  actual  life  with  the  utmost 
dislike  of  display  and  with  a  shrinking  from  strong 
professions.  The  motto  of  Froude's  Remains,  which 
embodied  his  characteristic  temper,  was  an  expression 
of  the  feeling  of  the  school : 

Se  sub  serenis  vultibus 
Austera  virtus  occulit : 
Timet  videri,  ne  suum, 
Dum  prodit,  amittat  decus.1 

The  heroic  strictness  and  self-denial  of  the  early 
Church  were  the  objects  of  admiration,  as  what  ought 

1   Hymn  in  Paris  Breviary,  Commune  Sanctarum  Mulierum. 


320  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

to  be  the  standard  of  Christians  ;  but  people  did  not 
yet  like  to  talk  much  about  attempts  to  copy  them. 
Such  a  book  as  the  Church  of  the  Fathers  brought 
out  with  great  force  and  great  sympathy  the  ascetic 
temper  and  the  value  put  on  celibacy  in  the  early 
days,  and  it  made  a  deep  impression  ;  but  nothing 
was  yet  formulated  as  characteristic  and  accepted 
doctrine. 

It  was  not  unnatural  that  this  should  change. 
The  principles  exemplified  in  the  high  Christian 
lives  of  antiquity  became  concrete  in  definite  rules 
and  doctrines,  and  these  rules  and  doctrines  were 
most  readily  found  in  the  forms  in  which  the  Roman 
schools  and  teachers  had  embodied  them.  The  dis- 
tinction between  the  secular  life  and  the  life  of 
"religion,"  with  all  its  consequences,  became  an  accepted 
one.  Celibacy  came  to  be  regarded  as  an  obvious 
part  of  the  self-sacrifice  of  a  clergyman's  life,  and  the 
belief  and  the  profession  of  it  formed  a  test,  under- 
stood if  not  avowed,  by  which  the  more  advanced  or 
resolute  members  of  the  party  were  distinguished  from 
the  rest.  This  came  home  to  men  on  the  threshold 
of  life  with  a  keener  and  closer  touch  than  questions 
about  doctrine.  It  was  the  subject  of  many  a  bitter, 
agonising  struggle  which  no  one  knew  anything  of; 
it  was  with  many  the  act  of  a  supreme  self- oblation. 
The  idea  of  the  single  life  may  be  a  utilitarian  one  as 
well  as  a  religious  one.  It  may  be  chosen  with  no 
thought  of  renunciation  or  self-denial,  for  the  greater 
convenience  and  freedom  of  the  student  or  the  philo- 
sopher, the  soldier  or  the  man  of  affairs.  It  may  also 
be  chosen  without  any  special  feeling  of  a  sacrifice  by 
the  clergyman,  as  most  helpful  for  his  work.  But  the 
idea  of  celibacy,  in  those  whom  it  affected  at  Oxford, 


xvin  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  321 

was  in  the  highest  degree  a  religious  and  romantic 
one.  The  hold  which  it  had  on  the  leader  of  the 
movement  made  itself  felt,  though  little  was  directly 
said.  To  shrink  from  it  was  a  mark  of  want  of 
strength  or  intelligence,  of  an  unmanly  preference 
for  English  home  life,  of  insensibility  to  the  generous 
devotion  and  purity  of  the  saints.  It  cannot  be 
doubted  that  at  this  period  of  the  movement  the 
power  of  this  idea  over  imagination  and  conscience 
was  one  of  the  strongest  forces  in  the  direction  of 
Rome. 

Of  all  these  ideas  Mr.  Ward's  articles  in  the 
British  Critic  were  the  vigorous  and  unintermittent 
exposition.  He  spoke  out,  and  without  hesitation. 
There  was  a  perpetual  contrast  implied,  when  it  was 
not  forcibly  insisted  on,  between  all  that  had  usually 
been  esteemed  highest  in  the  moral  temper  of  the 
English  Church,  always  closely  connected  with  home 
life  and  much  variety  of  character,  and  the  loftier  and 
bolder  but  narrower  standard  of  Roman  piety.  And  Mr. 
Ward  was  seconded  in  ti\z.British  Critic  by  other  writers, 
all  fervid  in  the  same  cause,  some  able  and  eloquent. 
The  most  distinguished  of  his  allies  was  Mr.  Oakeley, 
Fellow  of  Balliol  and  minister  of  Margaret  Chapel  in 
London.  Mr.  Oakeley  was,  perhaps,  the  first  to  realise 
the  capacities  of  the  Anglican  ritual  for  impressive 
devotional  use,  and  his  services,  in  spite  of  the  dis- 
advantages of  the  time,  and  also  of  his  chapel,  are  still 
remembered  by  some  as  having  realised  for  them,  in  a 
way  never  since  surpassed,  the  secrets  and  the  con- 
solations of  the  worship  of  the  Church.  Mr.  Oakeley, 
without  much  learning,  was  master  of  a  facile  and 
elegant  pen.  He  was  a  man  who  followed  a  trusted 
leader  with  chivalrous  boldness,  and  was  not  afraid  of 

Y 


322  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

strengthening  his  statements.  Without  Mr.  Ward's 
force  and  originality,  his  articles  were  more  attractive 
reading.  His  article  on  "Jewel"  was  more  than 
anything  else  a  landmark  in  the  progress  of  Roman 
ideas.1 

From  the  time  of  Mr.  Ward's  connexion  with  the 
British  Critic,  its  anti-Anglican  articles  had  given  rise 
to  complaints  which  did  not  become  less  loud  as  time 
went  on.  He  was  a  troublesome  contributor  to  his 
editor,  Mr.  T.  Mozley,  and  he  made  the  hair  of  many 
of  his  readers  stand  on  end  with  his  denunciations  of 
things  English  and  eulogies  of  things  Roman. 

My  first  troubles  (writes  Mr.  Mozley)  were  with  Oakeley  and 
Ward.  I  will  not  say  that  I  hesitated  much  as  to  the  truth  of  what 
they  wrote,  for  in  that  matter  I  was  inclined  to  go  very  far,  at  least 
in  the  way  of  toleration.  Yet  it  appeared  to  me  quite  impossible 
either  that  any  great  number  of  English  Churchmen  would  ever  go 
so  far,  or  that  the  persons  possessing  authority  in  the  Church  would 
fail  to  protest,  not  to  say  more.  ...  As  to  Ward  I  did  but  touch 
a  filament  or  two  in  one  of  his  monstrous  cobwebs,  and  off  he  ran 
instantly  to  Newman  to  complain  of  my  gratuitous  impertinence. 
Many  years  after  I  was  forcibly  reminded  of  him  by  a  pretty  group 
of  a  little  Cupid  flying  to  his  mother  to  show  a  wasp -sting  he 
had  just  received.  Newman  was  then  in  this  difficulty.  He  did 
not  disagree  with  what  Ward  had  written ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  had  given  neither  me  nor  Ward  to  understand  that  he  was  likely 
to  step  in  between  us.  In  fact,  he  wished  to  be  entirely  clear  of  the 
editorship.  This,  however,  was  a  thing  that  Ward  could  not  or 
would  not  understand.2 

The  discontent  of  readers  of  the  British  Critic 
was  great.  It  was  expressed  in  various  ways,  and 
was  represented  by  a  pamphlet  of  Mr.  W.  Palmer's 
of  Worcester,  in  which  he  contrasted,  with  words  of 

1  Reminiscences,  ii.  243,  244.      Cf.  British  Critic,  July  1841. 
Reminiscences,  ii.  225. 


xvin  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  323 

severe  condemnation,  the  later  writers  in  the  Review 
with  the  teaching  of  the  earlier  Tracts  for  the  Times, 
and  denounced  the  "  Romanising  "  tendency  shown  in 
its  articles.  In  the  autumn  of  1843  the  Review  came 
to  an  end.  A  field  of  work  was  thus  cut  off  from  Mr. 
Ward.  Full  of  the  interest  of  the  ideas  which  pos- 
sessed him,  always  equipped  and  cheerfully  ready  for 
the  argumentative  encounter,  and  keenly  relishing  the 
certaminis  gaudia,  he  at  once  seized  the  occasion  of 
Mr.  Palmer's  pamphlet  to  state  what  he  considered 
his  position,  and  to  set  himself  right  in  the  eyes  of  all 
fair  and  intelligent  readers.  He  intended  a  long 
pamphlet.  It  gradually  grew  under  his  hands — he 
was  not  yet  gifted  with  the  power  of  compression  and 
arrangement — into  a  volume  of  600  pages  :  the  famous 
Ideal  of  a  Christian  Church,  considered  in  Comparison 
with  Existing  Practice,  published  in  the  summer  of 
1844. 

The  Ideal  is  a  ponderous  and  unattractive  volume, 
ill  arranged  and  rambling,  which  its  style  and  other 
circumstances  have  caused  to  be  almost  forgotten. 
But  there  are  interesting  discussions  in  it  which  may 
still  repay  perusal  for  their  own  sakes.  The  object  of 
the  book  was  twofold.  Starting  with  an  "ideal"  of 
what  the  Christian  Church  may  be  expected  to  be  in 
its  various  relations  to  men,  it  assumes  that  the  Roman 
Church,  and  only  the  Roman  Church,  satisfies  the  con- 
ditions of  what  a  Church  ought  to  be,  and  it  argues  in 
detail  that  the  English  Church,  in  spite  of  its  profes- 
sions, utterly  and  absolutely  fails  to  fulfil  them.  It  is 
^.plaidoirie  against  everything  English,  on  the  ground 
that  it  cannot  be  Catholic  because  it  is  not  Roman. 
It  was  not  consistent,  for  while  the  writer  alleged  that 
"our  Church  totally  neglected  her  duties  both  as 


324  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

guardian  of  and  witness  to  morality,  and  as  witness 
and  teacher  of  orthodoxy,"  yet  he  saw  no  difficulty  in 
attributing  the  revival  of  Catholic  truth  to  "  the  in- 
herent vitality  and  powers  of  our  own  Church."1  But 
this  was  not  the  sting  and  provocation  of  the  book. 
That  lay  in  the  developed  claim,  put  forward  by  im- 
plication in  Mr.  Ward's  previous  writings,  and  now 
repeated  in  the  broadest  and  most  unqualified  form,  to 
hold  his  position  in  the  English  Church,  avowing  and 
teaching  all  Roman  doctrine. 

We  find  (he  exclaims),  oh,  most  joyful,  most  wonderful,  most 
unexpected  sight !  we  find  the  whole  cycle  of  Roman  doctrine 
gradually  possessing  numbers  of  English  Churchmen.  .  .  .  Three 
years  have  passed  since  I  said  plainly  that  in  subscribing  the  Articles 
I  renounce  no  Roman  doctrine ;  yet  I  retain  my  fellowship  which 
I  hold  on  the  tenure  of  subscription,  and  have  received  no  ecclesi- 
astical censure  in  any  shape.2 

There  was  much  to  learn  from  the  book  ;  much 
that  might  bring  home  to  the  most  loyal  Churchman  a 
sense  of  shortcomings,  a  burning  desire  for  improve- 
ment ;  much  that  might  give  every  one  a  great  deal  to 
think  about,  on  some  of  the  deepest  problems  of  the 
intellectual  and  religious  life.  But  it  could  not  be  ex- 
pected that  such  a  challenge,  in  such  sentences  as 
these,  should  remain  unnoticed. 

The  book  came  out  in  the  Long  Vacation,  and  it 
was  not  till  the  University  met  in  October  that  signs 
of  storm  began  to  appear.  But  before  it  broke  an 
incident  occurred  which  inflamed  men's  tempers.  Dr. 
Wynter's  reign  as  Vice-Chancellor  had  come  to  a  close, 
and  the  next  person,  according  to  the  usual  custom 
of  succession,  was  Dr.  Symons,  Warden  of  Wadham. 
Dr.  Symons  had  never  concealed  his  strong  hostility 

1  Ideal,  p.  566.  2  Ibid.  pp.  565-567. 


xvin  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  325 

to  the  movement,  and  he  had  been  one  of  Dr.  Pusey's 
judges.  The  prospect  of  a  partisan  Vice -Chancellor, 
certainly  very  determined,  and  supposed  not  to  be 
over  -  scrupulous,  was  alarming.  The  consent  of 
Convocation  to  the  Chancellor's  nomination  of  his 
substitute  had  always  been  given  in  words,  though 
no  instance  of  its  having  been  refused  was  known, 
at  least  in  recent  times.  But  a  great  jealousy  about 
the  rights  of  Convocation  had  been  growing  up  under 
the  late  autocratic  policy  of  the  Heads,  and  there  was 
a  disposition  to  assert,  and  even  to  stretch  these  rights, 
a  disposition  not  confined  to  the  party  of  the  move- 
ment. It  was  proposed  to  challenge  Dr.  Symons's 
nomination.  Great  doubts  were  felt  and  expressed 
about  the  wisdom  of  the  proposal  ;  but  at  length 
opposition  was  resolved  upon.  The  step  was  a 
warning  to  the  Heads,  who  had  been  provoking 
enough  ;  but  there  was  not  enough  to  warrant  such 
a  violent  departure  from  usage,  and  it  was  the  act 
of  exasperation  rather  than  of  wisdom.  The  blame 
for  it  must  be  shared  between  the  few  who  fiercely 
urged  it,  and  the  many  who  disapproved  and  ac- 
quiesced. On  the  day  of  nomination,  the  scrutiny 
was  allowed,  salvd  audoritate  Cancellarii ;  but  Dr. 
Symons's  opponents  were  completely  defeated  by  883 
to  183.  It  counted,  not  unreasonably,  as  a  "  Puseyite 
defeat." 

The  attempt  and  its  result  made  it  certain  that  in 
the  attack  that  was  sure  to  come  on  Mr.  Ward's  book, 
he  would  meet  with  no  mercy.  As  soon  as  term 
began  the  Board  of  Heads  of  Houses  took  up  the 
matter;  they  were  earnestly  exhorted  to  it  by  a  letter 
of  Archbishop  Whately's,  which  was  read  at  the 
Board.  But  they  wanted  no  pressing,  nor  is  it 


326  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

astonishing  that  they  could  not  understand  the  claim 
to  hold  the  "  whole  cycle  "  of  Roman  doctrine  in  the 
English  Church.  Mr.  Ward's  view  was  that  he  was 
loyally  doing  the  best  he  could  for  "  our  Church,"  not 
only  in  showing  up  its  heresies  and  faults,  but  in 
urging  that  the  only  remedy  was  wholesale  submission 
to  Rome.  To  the  University  authorities  this  was 
taking  advantage  of  his  position  in  the  Church  to 
assail  and  if  possible  destroy  it.  And  to  numbers  of 
much  more  sober  and  moderate  Churchmen,  sym- 
pathisers with  the  general  spirit  of  the  movement, 
it  was  evident  that  Mr.  Ward  had  long  passed  the 
point  when  tolerance  could  be  fairly  asked,  consistently 
with  any  respect  for  the  English  Church,  for  such 
sweeping  and  paradoxical  contradictions,  by  her  own 
servants,  of  her  claims  and  title.  Mr.  Ward's  manner 
also,  which,  while  it  was  serious  enough  in  his  writings, 
was  easy  and  even  jocular  in  social  intercourse,  left 
the  impression,  in  reality  a  most  unfair  impression, 
that  he  was  playing  and  amusing  himself  with  these 
momentous  questions. 

A  Committee  of  the  Board  examined  the  book  ;  a 
number  of  startling  propositions  were  with  ease  picked 
out,  some  preliminary  skirmishing  as  to  matters  of  form 
took  place,  and  in  December  1844  the  Board  announced 
that  they  proposed  to  submit  to  Convocation  without 
delay  three  measures: — (i)  to  condemn  Mr.  Ward's 
book  ;  (2)  to  degrade  Mr.  Ward  by  depriving  him  of 
all  his  University  degrees ;  and  (3)  whereas  the  exist- 
ing Statutes  gave  the  Vice-Chancellor  power  of  calling 
on  any  member  of  the  University  at  any  time  to  prove 
his  orthodoxy  by  subscribing  the  Articles,  to  add  to 
this  a  declaration,  to  be  henceforth  made  by  the  sub- 
scriber, that  he  took  them  in  the  sense  in  which  "  they 


xvin  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  327 

were  both  first  published  and  were  now  imposed  by 
the  University,"  with  the  penalty  of  expulsion  against 
any  one,  lay  or  clerical,  who  thrice  refused  subscription 
with  this  declaration. 

As  usual,  the  Board  entirely  mistook  the  temper  of 
the   University,   and  by  their   violence   and   want   of 
judgment  turned  the  best  chance  they  ever  had,   of 
carrying  the   University  with    them,    into  what  their 
blunders  really  made  an  ignominious  defeat.      If  they 
had  contented  themselves  with  the  condemnation,  in 
almost  any  terms,  of  Mr.  Ward's  book,  and  even  of  its 
author,  the  condemnation  would  have  been  overwhelm- 
ing.    A  certain  number  of  men  would  have  still  stood 
by  Mr.  Ward,  either  from  friendship  or  sympathy,  or 
from  independence  of  judgment,  or  from  dislike  of  the 
policy  of  the  Board  ;  but  they  would  have  been  greatly 
outnumbered.     The  degradation — the   Board  did  not 
venture  on  the  logical  consequence,  expulsion — was  a 
poor  and  even  ridiculous  measure  of  punishment ;  to 
reduce  Mr.  Ward  to  an  undergraduate  in  statu  pupil- 
lari,  and   a  commoner's  short  gown,  was  a  thing  to 
amuse  rather  than  terrify.     The  personal  punishment 
seemed    unworthy  when    they  dared  not  go  farther, 
while  to  many  the  condemnation  of  the  book  seemed 
penalty  enough  ;    and  the  condemnation  of  the  book 
by  these  voters  was  weakened  by  their  refusal  to  carry 
it  into  personal  disgrace  and  disadvantage.      Still,   if 
these  two    measures  had   stood   by  themselves,  they 
could  not  have  been  resisted,  and  the  triumph  of  the 
Board  would  have  been  a  signal  one.      But  they  could 
not  rest.   They  must  needs  attempt  to  put  upon  subscrip- 
tion, just  when  its  difficulties  were  beginning  to  be  felt, 
not  by  one  party,  but  by  all,  an  interpretation  which 
set  the  University  and  Church  in  a  flame.      The  cry, 


328  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

almost  the  shriek,  arose  that  it  was  a  new  test,  and 
a  test  which  took  for  granted  what  certainly  needed 
proof,  that  the  sense  in  which  the  Articles  were  first 
understood  and  published  was  exactly  the  same  as  that 
in  which  the  University  now  received  and  imposed 
them.  It  was  in  vain  that  explanations,  assurances, 
protests,  were  proffered ;  no  new  test,  it  was  said,  was 
thought  of — the  Board  would  never  think  of  such  a 
thing ;  it  was  only  something  to  ensure  good  faith  and 
honesty.  But  it  was  utterly  useless  to  contend  against 
the  storm.  A  test  it  was,  and  a  new  test  no  one  would 
have.  It  was  clear  that,  if  the  third  proposal  was 
pushed,  it  would  endanger  the  votes  about  Mr.  Ward. 
After  some  fruitless  attempts  at  justification  the  Board 
had,  in  the  course  of  a  month,  to  recognise  that  it  had 
made  a  great  mistake.  The  condemnation  of  Mr.  Ward 
was  to  come  on,  on  the  i3th  of  February;  and  on  the 
23d  of  January  the  Vice-Chancellor,  in  giving  notice 
of  it,  announced  that  the  third  proposal  was  with- 
drawn. 

It  might  have  been  thought  that  this  was  lesson 
enough  to  leave  well  alone.  The  Heads  were  sure  of 
votes  against  Mr.  Ward,  more  or  less  numerous  ;  they 
were  sure  of  a  victory  which  would  be  a  severe  blow, 
not  only  to  Mr.  Ward  and  his  special  followers,  but  to 
the  Tractarian  party  with  which  he  had  been  so  closely 
connected.  But  those  bitter  and  intemperate  spirits 
which  had  so  long  led  them  wrong  were  not  to  be 
taught  prudence  even  by  their  last  experience.  The 
mischief-makers  were  at  work,  flitting  about  the  official 
lodgings  at  Wadham  and  Oriel.  Could  not  something 
be  done,  even  at  this  late  hour,  to  make  up  for  the  loss 
of  the  test?  Could  not  something  be  done  to  disgrace 
a  greater  name  than  Mr.  Ward's  ?  Could  not  the 


xviii  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  329 

opportunity  which  was  coming  of  rousing  the  feeling 
of  the  University  against  the  disciple  be  turned  to 
account  to  drag  forth  his  supposed  master  from  his 
retirement  and  impunity,  and  brand  the  author  of 
No.  90  with  the  public  stigma — no  longer  this  time 
of  a  Hebdomadal  censure,  but  of  a  University  con- 
demnation ?  The  temptation  was  irresistible  to  a 
number  of  disappointed  partisans — kindly,  generous, 
good-natured  men  in  private  life,  but  implacable  in 
their  fierce  fanaticism.  In  their  impetuous  vehemence 
they  would  not  even  stop  to  think  what  would  be  said 
of  the  conditions  and  circumstances  under  which  they 
pressed  their  point.  On  the  23d  of  January  the  Vice- 
Chancellor  had  withdrawn  the  test.  On  the  25th  of 
January — those  curious  in  coincidences  may  observe 
that  it  was  the  date  of  No.  90  in  1841 — a  circular  was 
issued  inviting  signatures  for  a  requisition  to  the  Board, 
asking  them  to  propose,  in  the  approaching  Convoca- 
tion of  the  1 3th  of  February,  a  formal  censure  of  the 
principles  of  No.  90.  The  invitation  to  sign  was  issued 
in  the  names  of  Dr.  Faussett  and  Dr.  Ellerton  of 
Magdalen.  It  received  between  four  and  five  hundred 
signatures,  as  far  as  was  known  ;  but  it  was  withheld 
by  the  Vice-Chancellor  from  the  inspection  of  those 
who  officially  had  a  right  to  have  it  before  them.  On 
the  4th  of  February  its  prayer  came  before  the 
Hebdomadal  Board.  The  objection  of  haste — that 
not  ten  days  intervened  between  this  new  and 
momentous  proposal  and  the  day  of  voting — was 
brushed  aside.  The  members  of  the  Board  were 
mad  enough  not  to  see,  not  merely  the  odiousness 
of  the  course,  but  the  aggravated  odiousness  of  hurry. 
The  proposal  was  voted  by  the  majority,  sans  phrase. 
And  they  ventured,  amid  all  the  excitement  and 


330  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

irritation  of  the  moment,  to  offer  for  the  sanction  of 
the  University  a  decree  framed  in  the  words  of  their 
own  censure. 

The  interval  before  the  Convocation  was  short, 
but  it  was  long  enough  for  decisive  opinions  on  the 
proposal  of  the  Board  to  be  formed  and  expressed. 
Leading  men  in  London,  Mr.  Gladstone  among  them, 
were  clear  that  it  was  an  occasion  for  the  exercise  of 
the  joint  veto  with  which  the  Proctors  were  invested. 
The  veto  was  intended,  if  for  anything,  to  save  the 
University  from  inconsiderate  and  hasty  measures ; 
and  seldom,  except  in  revolutionary  times,  had  so 
momentous  and  so  unexpected  a  measure  been  urged 
on  with  such  unseemly  haste.  The  feeling  of  the 
younger  Liberals,  Mr.  Stanley,  Mr.  Donkin,  Mr. 
Jowett,  Dr.  Greenhill,  was  in  the  same  direction.  On 
the  loth  of  February  the  Proctors  announced  to  the 
Board  their  intention  to  veto  the  third  proposal.  But 
of  course  the  thing  went  forward.  The  Proctors  were 
friends  of  Mr.  Newman,  and  the  Heads  believed  that 
this  would  counterbalance  any  effect  from  their  act  of 
authority.  It  is  possible  that  the  announcement  may 
have  been  regarded  as  a  mere  menace,  too  audacious 
to  be  fulfilled.  On  the  i3th  of  February,  amid  slush 
and  snow,  Convocation  met  in  the  Theatre.  Mr.  Ward 
asked  leave  to  defend  himself  in  English,  and  occupied 
one  of  the  rostra,  usually  devoted  to  the  recital  of  prize 
poems  and  essays.  He  spoke  with  vigour  and  ability, 
dividing  his  speech,  and  resting  in  the  interval 
between  the  two  portions  in  the  rostrum.1  There  was 
no  other  address,  and  the  voting  began.  The  first 

1  It    is    part  of  the   history  of  the  of  his  friends,  to  their  great  astonish - 

time,   that  during  those  anxious  days,  ment  and  amusement,  very  soon  after 

Mr.  Ward  was  engaged  to  be  married.  the  events  in  the  Theatre. 
The  engagement  came  to  the  knowledge 


xviu  THE  IDEAL  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  331 

vote,  the  condemnation  of  the  book,  was  carried  by 
777  to  386.  The  second,  by  a  more  evenly  balanced 
division,  569  to  511.  When  the  Vice-Chancellor  put 
the  third,  the  Proctors  rose,  and  the  senior  Proctor,  Mr. 
Guillemard  of  Trinity,  stopped  it  in  the  words,  Nobis 
procuratoribus  non  placet.  Such  a  step,  of  course, 
only  suspended  the  vote,  and  the  year  of  office  of  these 
Proctors  was  nearly  run.  But  they  had  expressed  the 
feeling  of  those  whom  they  represented.  It  was  shown 
not  only  in  a  largely-signed  address  of  thanks.  All 
attempts  to  revive  the  decree  at  the  expiration  of  their 
year  of  office  failed.  The  wiser  heads  in  the  Heb- 
domadal Board  recognised  at  last  that  they  had  better 
hold  their  hand.  Mistakes  men  may  commit,  and  de- 
feats they  may  undergo,  and  yet  lose  nothing  that 
concerns  their  character  for  acting  as  men  of  a  high 
standard  ought  to  act.  But  in  this  case,  mistakes  and 
defeat  were  the  least  of  what  the  Board  brought  on 
themselves.  This  was  the  last  act  of  a  long  and  de- 
liberately pursued  course  of  conduct ;  and  if  it  was  the 
last,  it  was  because  it  was  the  upshot  and  climax,  and 
neither  the  University  nor  any  one  else  would  endure 
that  it  should  go  on  any  longer.  The  proposed  attack 
on  Mr.  Newman  betrayed  how  helpless  they  were, 
and  to  what  paltry  acts  of  worrying  it  was,  in  their 
judgment,  right  and  judicious  to  condescend.  It  gave 
a  measure  of  their  statesmanship,  wisdom,  and  good 
feeling  in  defending  the  interests  of  the  Church  ;  and 
it  made  a  very  deep  and  lasting  impression  on  all  who 
were  interested  in  the  honour  and  welfare  of  Oxford. 
Men  must  have  blinded  themselves  to  the  plainest 
effects  of  their  own  actions  who  could  have  laid  them- 
selves open  to  such  a  description  of  their  conduct  as  is 
contained  in  the  following  extract  from  a  paper  of  the 


332  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  xvm 

time — a  passage  of  which  the  indignant  and  pathetic 
undertone  reflected  the  indignation  and  the  sympathy 
of  hundreds  of  men  of  widely  differing  opinions. 

The  vote  is  an  answer  to  a  cry — that  cry  is  one  of  dishonesty, 
and  this  dishonesty  the  proposed  resolution,  as  plainly  as  it  dares  to 
say  anything,  insinuates.  On  this  part  of  the  question,  those  who 
have  ever  been  honoured  by  Mr.  Newman's  friendship  must  feel  it 
dangerous  to  allow  themselves  thus  to  speak.  And  yet  they  must 
speak ;  for  no  one  else  can  appreciate  it  as  truly  as  they  do.  When 
they  see  the  person  whom  they  have  been  accustomed  to  revere  as 
few  men  are  revered,  whose  labours,  whose  greatness,  whose  tender- 
ness, whose  singleness  and  holiness  of  purpose,  they  have  been 
permitted  to  know  intimately — not  allowed  even  the  poor  privilege 
of  satisfying,  by  silence  and  retirement — by  the  relinquishment  of 
preferment,  position,  and  influence — the  persevering  hostility  of 
persons  whom  they  cannot  help  comparing  with  him — not  permitted 
even  to  submit  in  peace  to  those  irregular  censures,  to  which  he 
seems  to  have  been  even  morbidly  alive,  but  dragged  forth  to  suffer 
an  oblique  and  tardy  condemnation ;  called  again  to  account  for 
matters  now  long  ago  accounted  for ;  on  which  a  judgment  has 
been  pronounced,  which,  whatever  others  may  think  of  it,  he  at 
least  has  accepted  as  conclusive — when  they  contrast  his  merits,  his 
submission,  his  treatment,  which  they  see  and  know,  with  the  merits, 
the  bearing,  the  fortunes  of  those  who  are  doggedly  pursuing  him, 
it  does  become  very  difficult  to  speak  without  sullying  what  it  is  a 
kind  of  pleasure  to  feel  is  his  cause  by  using  hard  words,  or  betray- 
ing it  by  not  using  them.  It  is  too  difficult  to  speak,  as  ought  to 
be  spoken,  of  this  ungenerous  and  gratuitous  afterthought — too 
difficult  to  keep  clear  of  what,  at  least,  will  be  thought  exaggeration ; 
too  difficult  to  do  justice  to  what  they  feel  to  be  undoubtedly  true ; 
and  I  will  not  attempt  to  say  more  than  enough  to  mark  an  opinion 
which  ought  to  be  plainly  avowed,  as  to  the  nature  of  this  pro- 
cedure.1 

1  From  a  Short  Appeal  to  Members       Fellow    of   Oriel.       (Dated    Saturday, 
of  Convocation  on  the  proposed  Censfire       8th  of  February  1845.) 
on   No.    90.       By    Frederic    Rogers, 


CHAPTER   XIX 

THE    CATASTROPHE 

THE  events  of  February  were  a  great  shock.  The 
routine  of  Oxford  had  been  broken  as  it  had  never 
been  broken  by  the  fiercest  strifes  before.  Condemna- 
tions had  been  before  passed  on  opinions,  and  even  on 
persons.  But  to  see  an  eminent  man,  of  blameless  life, 
a  fellow  of  one  of  the  first  among  the  Colleges, 
solemnly  deprived  of  his  degree  and  all  that  the 
degree  carried  with  it,  and  that  on  a  charge  in  which 
bad  faith  and  treachery  were  combined  with  alleged 
heresy,  was  a  novel  experience,  where  the  kindnesses 
of  daily  companionship  and  social  intercourse  still 
asserted  themselves  as  paramount  to  official  ideas 
of  position.  And  when,  besides  this,  people  realised 
what  more  had  been  attempted,  and  by  how  narrow  a 
chance  a  still  heavier  blow  had  been  averted  from  one 
towards  whom  so  many  hearts  warmed,  how  narrowly 
a  yoke  had  been  escaped  which  would  have  seemed  to 
subject  all  religious  thought  in  the  University  to  the 
caprice  or  the  blind  zeal  of  a  partisan  official,  the  sense 
of  relief  was  mixed  with  the  still  present  memory  of  a 
desperate  peril.  And  then  came  the  question  as  to 
what  was  to  come  next.  That  the  old  policy  of  the 
Board  would  be  revived  and  pursued  when  the  end  of 


334  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

the  Proctors'  year  delivered  it  from  their  inconvenient 
presence,  was  soon  understood  to  be  out  of  the 
question.  The  very  violence  of  the  measures  at- 
tempted had  its  reaction,  which  stopped  anything 
further.  The  opponents  of  Tractarianism,  Orthodox 
and  Liberal,  were  for  the  moment  gorged  with  their 
success.  What  men  waited  to  see  was  the  effect  on 
the  party  of  the  movement ;  how  it  would  influence  the 
advanced  portion  of  it ;  how  it  would  influence  the 
little  company  who  had  looked  on  in  silence  from  their 
retirement  at  Littlemore.  The  more  serious  aspect  of 
recent  events  was  succeeded  for  the  moment  by  a 
certain  comic  contrast,  created  by  Mr.  Ward's  engage- 
ment to  be  married,  which  was  announced  within  a 
week  of  his  degradation,  and  which  gave  the  common- 
rooms  something  to  smile  at  after  the  strain  and  ex- 
citement of  the  scene  in  the  Theatre.  But  that  passed, 
and  the  graver  outlook  of  the  situation  occupied  men's 
thoughts. 

There  was  a  widespread  feeling  of  insecurity. 
Friends  did  not  know  of  friends,  how  their  minds  were 
working,  how  they  might  go.  Anxious  letters  passed, 
the  writers  not  daring  to  say  too  much,  or  reveal  too 
much  alarm.  And  yet  there  was  still  some  hope  that 
at  least  with  the  great  leader  matters  were  not  des- 
perate. To  his  own  friends  he  gave  warning  ;  he  had 
already  done  so  in  a  way  to  leave  little  to  expect  but 
at  last  to  lose  him  ;  he  spoke  of  resigning  his  fellow- 
ship in  October,  though  he  wished  to  defer  this  till  the 
following  June  ;  but  nothing  final  had  been  said  pub- 
licly. Even  at  the  last  it  was  only  anticipated  by  some 
that  he  would  retire  into  lay  communion.  But  that 
silence  was  awful  and  ominous.  He  showed  no  signs 
of  being  affected  by  what  had  passed  in  Oxford.  He 


xix  THE  CATASTROPHE  335 

privately  thanked  the  Proctors  for  saving  him  from 
what  would  have  distressed  him ;  but  he  made  no 
comments  on  the  measures  themselves.  Still  it  could 
not  but  be  a  climax  of  everything-  as  far  as  Oxford  was 
concerned.  And  he  was  a  man  who  saw  signs  in  such 
events. 

It  was  inevitable  that  the  events  of  the  end  of  1844 
and  the  beginning  of  1845  should  bring  with  them 
a  great  crisis  in  the  development  of  religious  opinion, 
in  the  relations  of  its  different  forms  to  one  another, 
and  further,  in  the  thoughts  of  many  minds  as  to  their 
personal  position,  their  duty,  and  their  prospects. 
There  had  been  such  a  crisis  in  1841  at  the  publication 
of  No.  90.  After  the  discussions  which  followed  that 
tract,  Anglican  theology  could  never  be  quite  the  same 
that  it  had  been  before.  It  was  made  to  feel  the 
sense  of  some  grave  wants,  which,  however  they  might 
be  supplied  in  the  future,  could  no  longer  be  unnoticed 
or  uncared  for.  And  individuals,  amid  the  strife  of 
tongues,  had  felt,  some  strongly  and  practically,  but  a 
much  larger  number  dimly  and  reluctantly,  the  possi- 
bility, unwelcome  to  most,  but  not  without  interest  to 
others,  of  having  to  face  the  strange  and  at  one  time 
inconceivable  task  of  revising  the  very  foundations  of 
their  religion.  And  such  a  revision  had  since  that 
time  been  going  on  more  or  less  actively  in  many 
minds  ;  in  some  cases  with  very  decisive  results.  But 
after  the  explosion  caused  by  Mr.  Ward's  book,  a 
crisis  of  a  much  more  grave  and  wide-reaching  sort 
had  arrived.  To  ordinary  lookers-on  it  naturally 
seemed  that  a  shattering  and  decisive  blow  had  been 
struck  at  the  Tractarian  party  and  their  cause ;  struck, 
indeed,  formally  and  officially,  only  at  its  extrava- 
gances, but  struck,  none  the  less,  virtually,  at  the 


336  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

premisses  which  led  to  these  extravagances,  and  at  the 
party,  which,  while  disapproving  them,  shrank,  with 
whatever  motives, — policy,  generosity,  or  secret  sym- 
pathy,— from  joining  in  the  condemnation  of  them. 
It  was  more  than  a  defeat,  it  was  a  rout,  in  which 
they  were  driven  and  chased  headlong  from  the  field ; 
a  wreck  in  which  their  boasts  and  hopes  of  the  last 
few  years  met  the  fate  which  wise  men  had  always 
anticipated.  Oxford  repudiated  them.  Their  theories, 
their  controversial  successes,  their  learned  arguments, 
their  appeals  to  the  imagination,  all  seemed  to  go 
down,  and  to  be  swept  away  like  chaff,  before  the 
breath  of  straightforward  common  sense  and  honesty. 
Henceforth  there  was  a  badge  affixed  to  them  and  all 
who  belonged  to  them,  a  badge  of  suspicion  and  dis- 
credit, and  even  shame,  which  bade  men  beware  of 
them,  an  overthrow  under  which  it  seemed  wonderful 
that  they  could  raise  their  heads  or  expect  a  hearing. 
It  is  true,  that  to  those  who  looked  below  the  surface, 
the  overthrow  might  have  seemed  almost  too  showy 
and  theatrical  to  be  quite  all  that  it  was  generally 
thought  to  be.  There  had  been  too  much  passion, 
and  too  little  looking  forward  to  the  next  steps,  in  the 
proceedings  of  the  victors.  There  was  too  much 
blindness  to  weak  points  of  their  own  position,  too 
much  forgetfulness  of  the  wise  generosity  of  cautious 
warfare.  The  victory  was  easy  to  win ;  the  next 
moment  it  was  quite  obvious  that  they  did  not  know 
what  to  do  with  it,  and  were  at  their  wits'  end  to 
understand  what  it  meant.  And  the  defeated  party, 
though  defeated  signally  and  conspicuously  in  the 
sight  of  the  Church  and  the  country,  had  in  it  too 
large  a  proportion  of  the  serious  and  able  men  of  the 
University,  with  too  clear  and  high  a  purpose,  and 


xix  THE  CATASTROPHE  337 

too  distinct  a  sense  of  the  strength  and  reality  of  their 
ground,  to  be  in  as  disadvantageous  a  condition  as 
from  a  distance  might  be  imagined.  A  closer  view 
would  have  discovered  how  much  sympathy  there  was 
for  their  objects  and  for  their  main  principles  in  many 
who  greatly  disapproved  of  much  in  the  recent  course 
and  tendency  of  the  movement.  It  might  have  been 
seen  how  the  unwise  measures  of  the  Heads  had 
awakened  convictions  among  many  who  were  not 
naturally  on  their  side,  that  it  was  necessary  both 
on  the  ground  of  justice  and  policy  to  arrest  all 
extreme  measures,  and  to  give  a  breathing  time  to 
the  minority.  Confidence  in  their  prospects  as  a 
party  might  have  been  impaired  in  the  Tractarians  ; 
but  confidence  in  their  principles,  confidence  that  they 
had  rightly  interpreted  the  spirit,  the  claims,  and  the 
duties  of  the  English  Church,  confidence  that  devotion 
to  its  cause  was  the  call  of  God,  whatever  might 
happen  to  their  own  fortunes,  this  confidence  was 
unshaken  by  the  catastrophe  of  February. 

But  that  crisis  had  another  important  result,  not 
much  noticed  then,  but  one  which  made  itself  abund- 
antly evident  in  the  times  that  followed.  The  decisive 
breach  between  the  old  parties  in  the  Church,  both 
Orthodox  and  Evangelical,  and  the  new  party  of  the 
movement,  with  the  violent  and  apparently  irretriev- 
able discomfiture  of  the  latter  as  the  rising  force  in 
Oxford,  opened  the  way  and  cleared  the  ground  for  the 
formation  and  the  power  of  a  third  school  of  opinion, 
which  was  to  be  the  most  formidable  rival  of  the  Tract- 
arians, and  whose  leaders  were  eventually  to  succeed 
where  the  Tractarians  had  failed,  in  becoming  the 
masters  and  the  reformers  of  the  University.  Liberal- 
ism had  hitherto  been  represented  in  Oxford  in  forms 


338  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

which  though  respectable  from  intellectual  vigour  were 
unattractive,  sometimes  even  repulsive.  They  were 
dry,  cold,  supercilious,  critical ;  they  wanted  enthusi- 
asm ;  they  were  out  of  sympathy  with  religion  and  the 
religious  temper  and  aims.  They  played,  without 
knowing  it,  on  the  edge  of  the  most  dangerous  ques- 
tions. The  older  Oxford  Liberals  were  either  intellect- 
ually aristocratic,  dissecting  the  inaccuracies  or  showing 
up  the  paralogisms  of  the  current  orthodoxy,  or  they 
were  poor  in  character,  Liberals  from  the  zest  of 
sneering  and  mocking  at  what  was  received  and 
established,  or  from  the  convenience  of  getting  rid  of 
strict  and  troublesome  rules  of  life.  They  patronised 
Dissenters ;  they  gave  Whig  votes  ;  they  made  free, 
in  a  mild  way,  with  the  pet  conventions  and  prejudices 
of  Tories  and  High  Churchmen.  There  was  nothing 
inspiring  in  them,  however  much  men  might  respect 
their  correct  and  sincere  lives.  But  a  younger  set  of 
men  brought,  mainly  from  Rugby  and  Arnold's  teach- 
ing, a  new  kind  of  Liberalism.  It  was  much  bolder 
and  more  independent  than  the  older  forms,  less  in- 
clined to  put  up  with  the  traditional,  more  searching 
and  inquisitive  in  its  methods,  more  suspicious  and 
daring  in  its  criticism  ;  but  it  was  much  larger  in  its 
views  and  its  sympathies,  and,  above  all,  it  was  imagin- 
ative, it  was  enthusiastic,  and,  without  much  of  the 
devotional  temper,  it  was  penetrated  by  a  sense  of  the 
reality  and  seriousness  of  religion.  It  saw  greater 
hopes  in  the  present  and  the  future  than  the  Tract- 
arians.  It  disliked  their  reverence  for  the  past  and 
the  received  as  inconsistent  with  what  seemed  evidence 
of  the  providential  order  of  great  and  fruitful  change. 
It  could  not  enter  into  their  discipline  of  character,  and 
shrank  from  it  as  antiquated,  unnatural,  and  narrow. 


xix  THE  CATASTROPHE  339 

But   these  younger   Liberals  were    interested   in  the 
Tractarian  innovators,  and,  in  a  degree,  sympathised 
with  them  as  a  party  of  movement  who  had  had  the 
courage  to  risk  and  sacrifice  much  for  an  unworldly 
end.     And  they  felt  that  their  own  opportunity  was 
come  when  all  the  parties  which  claimed  to  represent 
the  orthodoxy  of  the  English  Church  appeared  to  have 
broken  for  good  with  one  another,  and  when  their  differ- 
ences had  thrown  so  much  doubt  and  disparagement 
on  so  important  and  revered  a  symbol  of  orthodoxy 
as  the  Thirty-nine  Articles.    They  looked  on  partly  with 
amusement,  partly  with  serious  anxiety,  at  the  dispute  ; 
they  discriminated  with  impartiality  between  the  strong 
and  the  weak  points  in  the  arguments  on  both  sides  : 
and  they  enforced  with  the  same  impartiality  on  both 
of  them  the  reasons,  arising  out  of  the  difficulties  in 
which   each   party  was  involved,   for  new  and   large 
measures,  for  a  policy  of  forbearance  and  toleration. 
They  inflicted  on  the  beaten  side,  sometimes  with  more 
ingenuity  than  fairness,  the  lesson  that  the  "  wheel  had 
come  round  full  circle  "  with  them  ;  that  they  were  but 
reaping  as  they  themselves  had  sown  : — but  now  that 
there  seemed  little  more  to  fear  from  the  Tractarians, 
the  victorious  authorities  were  the  power  which  the 
Liberals   had    to   keep    in    check.      They    used   their 
influence,  such  as   it  was  (and  it  was  not  then  what 
it  was  afterwards),  to  protect  the  weaker  party.      It  was 
a  favourite  boast  of  Dean  Stanley's  in  after-times,  that 
the  intervention  of  the  Liberals  had  saved  the  Tract- 
arians from  complete  disaster.      It  is  quite  true  that 
the  younger  Liberals  disapproved  the  continuance  of 
harsh  measures,  and  some  of  them  exerted  themselves 
against  such  measures.     They  did  so  in  many  ways 
and  for  various  reasons ;  from  consistency,  from  feel- 


340  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

ings  of  personal  kindness,  from  a  sense  of  justice,  from 
a  sense  of  interest — some  in  a  frank  and  generous 
spirit,  others  with  contemptuous  indifference.  But 
the  debt  of  the  Tractarians  to  their  Liberal  friends  in 
1845  was  not  so  great  as  Dean  Stanley,  thinking  of 
the  Liberal  party  as  what  it  had  ultimately  grown  to 
be,  supposed  to  be  the  case.  The  Liberals  of  his 
school  were  then  still  a  little  flock  :  a  very  distinguished 
and  a  very  earnest  set  of  men,  but  too  young  and  too 
few  as  yet  to  hold  the  balance  in  such  a  contest.  The 
Tractarians  were  saved  by  what  they  were  and  what 
they  had  done,  and  could  do,  themselves.  But  it  is 
also  true,  that  out  of  these  feuds  and  discords,  the 
Liberal  party  which  was  to  be  dominant  in  Oxford 
took  its  rise,  soon  to  astonish  old-fashioned  Heads  of 
Houses  with  new  and  deep  forms  of  doubt  more  auda- 
cious than  Tractarianism,  and  ultimately  to  overthrow 
not  only  the  victorious  authorities,  but  the  ancient 
position  of  the  Church,  and  to  recast  from  top  to 
bottom  the  institutions  of  the  University.  The  i3th 
of  February  was  not  only  the  final  defeat  and  conclu- 
sion of  the  first  stage  of  the  movement.  It  was  the 
birthday  of  the  modern  Liberalism  of  Oxford. 

But  it  was  also  a  crisis  in  the  history  of  many  lives. 
From  that  moment,  the  decision  of  a  number  of  good 
and  able  men,  who  had  once  promised  to  be  among 
the  most  valuable  servants  of  the  English  Church, 
became  clear.  If  it  were  doubtful  before,  in  many 
cases,  whether  they  would  stay  with  her,  the  doubt 
existed  no  longer.  It  was  now  only  a  question  of 
time  when  they  would  break  the  tie  and  renounce  their 
old  allegiance.  In  the  bitter,  and  in  many  cases 
agonising  struggle  which  they  had  gone  through  as  to 
their  duty  to  God  and  conscience,  a  sign  seemed  now 


xix  THE  CATASTROPHE  .      341 

to  be  given  them  which  they  could  not  mistake.  They 
were  invited,  on  one  side,  to  come ;  they  were  told, 
sternly  and  scornfully,  on  the  other,  to  go.  They  could 
no  longer  be  accused  of  impatience  if  they  brought 
their  doubts  to  an  end,  and  made  up  their  minds  that 
their  call  was  to  submit  to  the  claims  of  Rome,  that 
their  place  was  in  its  communion. 

Yet  there  was  a  pause.  It  was  no  secret  what 
was  coming.  But  men  lingered.  It  was  not  till  the 
summer  that  the  first  drops  of  the  storm  began  to  fall. 
Then  through  the  autumn  and  the  next  year,  friends, 
whose  names  and  forms  were  familiar  in  Oxford,  one 
by  one  disappeared  and  were  lost  to  it.  Fellowships, 
livings,  curacies,  intended  careers,  were  given  up. 
Mr.  Ward  went.  Mr.  Capes,  who  had  long  followed 
Mr.  Ward's  line,  and  had  spent  his  private  means  to 
build  a  church  near  Bridgewater,  went  also.  Mr. 
Oakeley  resigned  Margaret  Chapel  and  went.  Mr. 
Ambrose  St.  John,  Mr.  Coffin,  Mr.  Dalgairns,  Mr. 
Faber,  Mr.  T.  Meyrick,  Mr.  Albany  Christie,  Mr.  R. 
Simpson  of  Oriel,  were  received  in  various  places  and 
various  ways,  and  in  the  next  year,  Mr.  J.  S.  North- 
cote,  Mr.  J.  B.  Morris,  Mr.  G.  Ryder,  Mr.  David 
Lewis.  On  the  3d  of  October  1845  Mr-  Newman 
requested  the  Provost  of  Oriel  to  remove  his  name 
from  the  books  of  the  College  and  University,  but 
without  giving  any  reason.  The  6th  of  October  is 
the  date  of  the  "Advertisement"  to  the  work  which 
had  occupied  Mr.  Newman  through  the  year — the 
Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine.  On 
the  8th  he  was,  as  he  has  told  us  in  the  Apologia, 
received  by  Father  Dominic,  the  Passionist.  To 
the  "Advertisement"  are  subjoined  the  following 
words  : 


342     .  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

Postscript. — Since  the  above  was  written  the  Author  has  joined 
the  Catholic  Church.  It  was  his  intention  and  wish  to  have  carried 
his  volume  through  the  press  before  deciding  finally  on  this  step. 
But  when  he  got  some  way  in  the  printing,  he  recognised  in  himself 
a  conviction  of  the  truth  of  the  conclusion,  to  which  the  discussion 
leads,  so  clear  as  to  preclude  further  deliberation.  Shortly  after- 
wards circumstances  gave  him  the  opportunity  of  acting  on  it,  and 
he  felt  that  he  had  no  warrant  for  refusing  to  act  on  it. 

So  the  reality  of  what  had  been  so  long  and  often 
so  lightly  talked  about  by  those  who  dared  it,  provoked 
it,  or  hoped  for  it,  had  come  indeed  ;  and  a  consider- 
able portion  of  English  society  learned  what  it  was  to 
be  novices  in  a  religious  system,  hitherto  not  only  alien 
and  unknown,  but  dreaded,  or  else  to  have  lost  friends 
and  relatives,  who  were  suddenly  transformed  into  severe 
and  uncompromising  opponents,  speaking  in  unfamiliar 
terms,  and  sharply  estranged  in  sympathies  and  rules 
of  life.      Some    of  them,   especially    those    who    had 
caught    the    spirit  of  their   leader,  began    life    anew, 
took  their  position  as  humble  learners  in  the  Roman 
Schools,  and   made   the  most   absolute   sacrifice   of  a 
whole  lifetime   that   man   can   make.     To  others   the 
change   came  and  was  accepted  as  an  emancipation, 
not  only  from  the  bonds  of  Anglicanism,  but  from  the 
obligations  of  orders  and  priestly  vows  and  devotion. 
In  some  cases,  where  they  were  married,  there  was  no 
help  for  it.      But  in  almost  all  cases  there  was  a  great 
surrender  of  what  English  life  has  to  offer  to  those 
brought  up  in  it.     Of  the  defeated  party,  those  who 
remained  had  much  to  think  about,  between  grief  at 
the  breaking  of  old  ties,  and  the  loss  of  dear  friends, 
and    perplexities    about    their    own     position.      The 
anxiety,  the  sorrow  at  differing  and  parting,  seem  now 
almost  extravagant  and  unintelligible.     There  are  those 
who  sneer  at  the  "distress"  of  that  time.     There  had 


xix  THE  CATASTROPHE  343 

not  been  the  same  suffering,  the  same  estrangement, 
when  Churchmen  turned  dissenters,  like  Bulteel  and 
Baptist  Noel.  But  the  movement  had  raised  the 
whole  scale  of  feeling  about  religious  matters  so  high, 
the  questions  were  felt  to  be  so  momentous,  the  stake 
and  the  issue  so  precious,  the  "Loss  and  Gain"  so 
immense,  that  to  differ  on  such  subjects  was  the 
differing  on  the  greatest  things  which  men  could 
differ  about.  But  in  a  time  of  distress,  of  which  few 
analogous  situations  in  our  days  can  give  the  measure, 
the  leaders  stood  firm.  Dr.  Pusey,  Mr.  Keble,  Mr. 
Marriott  accepted,  with  unshaken  faith  in  the  cause  of 
the  English  Church,  the  terrible  separation.  They 
submitted  to  the  blow — submitted  to  the  reproach  of 
having  been  associates  of  those  who  had  betrayed 
hopes  and  done  so  much  mischief;  submitted  to  the 
charge  of  inconsistency,  insincerity,  cowardice ;  but 
they  did  not  flinch.  Their  unshrinking  attitude  was 
a  new  point  of  departure  for  those  who  believed  in  the 
Catholic  foundation  of  the  English  Church. 

Among  those  deeply  affected  by  these  changes, 
there  were  many  who  had  been  absolutely  uninfluenced 
by  the  strong  Roman  current.  They  had  recognised 
many  good  things  in  the  Roman  Church ;  they  were 
fully  alive  to  many  shortcomings  in  the  English 
Church ;  but  the  possibility  of  submission  to  the 
Roman  claims  had  never  been  a  question  with  them. 
A  typical  example  of  such  minds  was  Mr.  Isaac 
Williams,  a  pupil  of  Mr.  Keble,  an  intimate  friend  of 
Mr.  Newman,  a  man  of  simple  and  saintly  life,  with 
heart  and  soul  steeped  in  the  ancient  theology  of 
undivided  Christendom,  and  for  that  very  reason 
untempted  by  the  newer  principles  and  fashions  of 
Rome.  There  were  numbers  who  thought  like  him  ; 


344  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

but  there  were  others  also,  who  were  forced  in  afresh 
upon  themselves,  and  who  had  to  ask  themselves  why 
they  stayed,  when  a  teacher,  to  whom  they  had  looked 
up  as  they  had  to  Mr.  Newman,  and  into  whose 
confidence  they  had  been  admitted,  thought  it  his  duty 
to  go.  With  some  the  ultimate,  though  delayed,  de- 
cision was  to  follow  him.  With  others,  the  old  and  fair 
prayudiciutii  against  the  claims  of  Rome,  which  had 
always  asserted  itself  even  against  the  stringent  logic  of 
Mr.  Ward  and  the  deep  and  subtle  ideas  of  Mr.  New- 
man, became,  when  closed  with,  and  tested  face  to  face 
in  the  light  of  fact  and  history,  the  settled  conviction 
of  life.  Some  extracts  from  contemporary  papers,  real 
records  of  the  private  perplexities  and  troubles  actually 
felt  at  the  time,  may  illustrate  what  was  passing  in  the 
minds  of  some  whom  knowledge  and  love  of  Mr.  New- 
man failed  to  make  his  followers  in  his  ultimate  step. 
The  first  extract  belongs  to  some  years  before,  but  it 
is  part  of  the  same  train  of  thinking.1 

As  to  myself,  I  am  getting  into  a  very  unsettled  state  as  to  aims 
and  prospects.  I  mean  that  as  things  are  going  on,  a  man  does  not 
know  where  he  is  going  to ;  one  cannot  imagine  what  state  of  things 
to  look  forward  to ;  in  what  way,  and  under  what  circumstances, 
one's  coming  life — if  it  does  come — is  to  be  spent ;  what  is  to 
become  of  one.  I  cannot  at  all  imagine  myself  a  convert ;  but  how 
am  I  likely,  in  the  probable  state  of  things,  to  be  able  to  serve  as 
an  English  clergyman  ?  Shall  I  ever  get  Priest's  orders  ?  Shall  I 
be  able  to  continue  always  serving  ?  What  is  one's  line  to  be ; 
what  ought  to  be  one's  aims ;  or  can  one  have  any  ? 

The  storm  is  not  yet  come :  how  it  may  come,  and  how  soon  it 
may  blow  over,  and  what  it  may  leave  behind,  is  doubtful ;  but 
some  sort  of  crisis,  I  think,  must  come  before  things  settle.  With 
the  Bishops  against  us,  and  Puritanism  aggressive,  we  may  see 
strange  things  before  the  end. 

1  Compare  Mozley's  Reminiscences^  ii.  1-3. 


xix  THE  CATASTROPHE  345 

When  the   "storm"  had  at  length  come,  though 
before  its  final  violence,  the  same  writer  continues  : 

The  present  hopeless  check  and  weight  to  our  party — what  has 
for  the  time  absolutely  crushed  us — is  the  total  loss  of  confidence 
arising  from  the  strong  tendency,  no  longer  to  be  dissembled  or 
explained  away,  among  many  of  us  to  Rome.  I  see  no  chance  of 
our  recovery,  or  getting  our  heads  above  water  from  this,  at  least  in 
England,  for  years  to  come.  And  it  is  a  check  which  will  one  day 
be  far  greater  than  it  is  now.  Under  the  circumstances — having 
not  the  most  distant  thought  of  leaving  the  English  Church  myself, 
and  yet  having  no  means  of  escaping  the  very  natural  suspicion  of 
Romanising  without  giving  up  my  best  friends  and  the  most  saint- 
like men  in  England — how  am  I  to  view  my  position  ?  What  am 
I  witnessing  to  ?  What,  if  need  be,  is  one  to  suffer  for  ?  A  man 
has  no  leaning  towards  Rome,  does  not  feel,  as  others  do,  the 
strength  of  her  exclusive  claims  to  allegiance,  the  perfection  of  her 
system,  its  right  so  to  overbalance  all  the  good  found  in  ours  as  to 
make  ours  absolutely  untrustworthy  for  a  Christian  to  rest  in,  not- 
withstanding all  circumstances,  of  habit,  position,  and  national 
character ;  has  such  doubts  on  the  Roman  theory  of  the  Church, 
the  Ultramontane,  and  such  instincts  not  only  against  many  of  their 
popular  religious  customs  and  practical  ways  of  going  on,  but  against 
their  principles  of  belief  (e.g.  divine  faith  —  relics),  as  to  repel  him 
from  any  wish  to  sacrifice  his  own  communion  for  theirs  ;  yet  withal, 
and  without  any  great  right  on  his  part  to  complain,  is  set  down  as 
a  man  who  may  any  day,  and  certainly  will  some  day,  go  over ;  and 
he  has  no  lawful  means  of  removing  the  suspicion  : — why  is  it  tanti 
to  submit  to  this  ? 

However  little  sympathy  we  Englishmen  have  with  Rome,  the 
Western  Churches  under  Rome  are  really  living  and  holy  branches 
of  the  Church  Catholic ;  corruptions  they  may  have,  so  may  we ; 
but  putting  these  aside,  they  are  Catholic  Christians,  or  Catholic 
Christianity  has  failed  out  of  the  world  :  we  are  no  more  [Catholic] 
than  they.  But  this,  public  opinion  has  not  for  centuries,  and  does 
not  nozv,  realise  or  allow.  So  no  one  can  express  in  reality  and  detail 
a  practical  belief  in  their  Catholicity,  in  their  equality  (setting  one 
thing  against  another)  with  us  as  Christians,  without  being  suspected 
of  what  such  belief  continually  leads  to — disloyalty  to  the  English 
Church.  Yet  such  belief  is  nevertheless  well-grounded  and  right, 


346  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

and  there  is  no  great  hope  for  the  Church  till  it  gains  ground, 
soberly,  powerfully,  and  apart  from  all  low  views  of  proselytising,  or 
fear  of  danger.  What  therefore  the  disadvantage  of  those  among 
us  who  do  not  really  deserve  the  imputation  of  Romanising  may  be 
meant  for,  is  to  break  this  practical  belief  to  the  English  Church. 
We  may  be  silenced,  but,  without  any  wish  to  leave  the  English 
Church,  we  cannot  give  up  the  belief,  that  the  Western  Church 
under  Rome  is  a  true,  living,  venerable  branch  of  the  Christian 
Church.  There  are  dangers  in  such  a  belief,  but  they  must  be  pro- 
vided against,  they  do  not  affect  the  truth  of  the  belief. 

Such  searchings  of  heart  were  necessarily  rendered 
more  severe  and  acute  by  Mr.  Newman's  act.  There 
was  no  longer  any  respite ;  his  dearest  friends  must 
choose  between  him  and  the  English  Church.  And  the 
choice  was  made,  by  those  who  did  not  follow  him,  on  a 
principle  little  honoured  or  believed  in  at  the  time  on 
either  side,  Roman  or  Protestant ;  but  a  principle  which 
in  the  long-run  restored  hope  and  energy  to  a  cause 
which  was  supposed  to  be  lost.  It  was  not  the  revival 
of  the  old  Via  Media;  it  was  not  the  assertion  of 
the  superiority  of  the  English  Church  ;  it  was  not  a 
return  to  the  old-fashioned  and  ungenerous  methods 
of  controversy  with  Rome — one-sided  in  all  cases, 
ignorant,  coarse,  unchristian  in  many.  It  was  not 
the  proposal  of  a  new  theory  of  the  Church — its  func- 
tions, authority,  and  teaching,  a  counter-ideal  to  Mr. 
Ward's  imposing  Ideal.  It  was  the  resolute  and 
serious  appeal  from  brilliant  logic,  and  keen  sarcasm, 
and  pathetic  and  impressive  eloquence,  to  reality 
and  experience,  as  well  as  to  history,  as  to  the  positive 
and  substantial  characteristics  of  the  traditional  and 
actually  existing  English  Church,  shown  not  on  paper 
but  in  work,  and  in  spite  of  contradictory  appearances 
and  inconsistent  elements ;  and  along  with  this,  an 
attempt  to  put  in  a  fair  and  just  light  the  comparative 


xix  THE  CATASTROPHE  347 

excellences  and  defects  of  other  parts  of  Christendom, 
excellences  to  be  ungrudgingly  admitted,  but  not  to 
be  allowed  to  bar  the  recognition  of  defects.  The  feel- 
ing which  had  often  stirred,  even  when  things  looked 
at  the  worst,  that  Mr.  Newman  had  dealt  unequally 
and  hardly  with  the  English  Church,  returned  with 
gathered  strength.  The  English  Church  was  after  all 
as  well  worth  living  in  and  fighting  for  as  any  other  ; 
it  was  not  only  in  England  that  light  and  dark,  in 
teaching  and  in  life,  were  largely  intermingled,  and  the 
mixture  had  to  be  largely  allowed  for.  We  had  our 
Sparta,  a  noble,  if  a  rough  and  an  incomplete  one  ; 
patiently  to  do  our  best  for  it  was  better  than  leaving 
it  to  its  fate,  in  obedience  to  signs  and  reasonings 
which  the  heat  of  strife  might  well  make  delusive.  It 
was  one  hopeful  token,  that  boasting  had  to  be  put 
away  from  us  for  a  long  time  to  come.  In  these  days 
of  stress  and  sorrow  were  laid  the  beginnings  of  a 
school,  whose  main  purpose  was  to  see  things  as  they 
are  ;  which  had  learned  by  experience  to  distrust  un- 
qualified admiration  and  unqualified  disparagement ; 
determined  not  to  be  blinded  even  by  genius  to  plain 
certainties  ;  not  afraid  to  honour  all  that  is  great  and 
beneficent  in  Rome,  not  afraid  with  English  frankness 
to  criticise  freely  at  home ;  but  not  to  be  won  over,  in 
one  case,  by  the  good  things,  to  condone  and  accept 
the  bad  things ;  and  not  deterred,  in  the  other,  from 
service,  from  love,  from  self-sacrifice,  by  the  presence 
of  much  to  regret  and  to  resist. 

All  this  new  sense  of  independence,  arising  from 
the  sense  of  having  been  left  almost  desolate  by  the 
disappearance  of  a  great  stay  and  light  in  men's  daily 
life,  led  to  various  and  different  results.  In  some 
minds,  after  a  certain  trial,  it  actually  led  men  back  to 


348  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

that  Romeward  tendency  from  which  they  had  at  first 
recoiled.  In  others,  the  break-up  of  the  movement 
under  such  a  chief  led  them  on,  more  or  less,  and  some 
very  far,  into  a  career  of  speculative  Liberalism  like 
that  of  Mr.  Blanco  White,  the  publication  of  whose 
biography  coincided  with  Mr.  Newman's  change.  In 
many  others,  especially  in  London  and  the  towns,  it  led 
to  new  and  increasing  efforts  to  popularise  in  various 
ways — through  preaching,  organisation,  greater  atten- 
tion to  the  meaning,  the  solemnities,  and  the  fitnesses 
of  worship — the  ideas  of  the  Church  movement.  Dr. 
Pusey  and  Mr.  Keble  were  still  the  recognised  chiefs 
of  the  continued  yet  remodelled  movement.  It  had  its 
quarterly  organ,  the  Christian  Remembrancer,  which 
had  taken  the  place  of  the  old  British  Critic  in  the 
autumn  of  1844.  A  number  of  able  Cambridge  men 
had  thrown  their  knowledge  and  thoroughness  of  work 
into  the  Ecclesiologist.  There  were  newspapers — the 
English  Churchman,  and,  starting  in  1846  from  small 
and  difficult  beginnings,  in  the  face  of  long  discourage- 
ment and  at  times  despair,  the  Giiardian.  One  mind 
of  great  and  rare  power,  though  only  recognised  for 
what  he  was  much  later  in  his  life,  one  undaunted 
heart,  undismayed,  almost  undepressed,  so  that  those 
who  knew  not  its  inner  fires  thought  him  cold  and 
stoical,  had  lifted  itself  above  the  wreck  at  Oxford. 
The  shock  which  had  cowed  and  almost  crushed 
some  of  Mr.  Newman's  friends  roused  and  fired  Mr. 
James  Mozley. 

To  take  leave  of  Mr.  Newman  (he  writes  on  the  morrow  of  the 
event),  is  a  heavy  task.  His  step  was  not  unforeseen  ;  but  when  it 
is  come  those  who  knew  him  feel  the  fact  as  a  real  change  within 
them — feel  as  if  they  were  entering  upon  a  fresh  stage  of  their  own 
life.  May  that  very  change  turn  to  their  profit,  and  discipline  them 


THE  CATASTROPHE  349 

- 

its  hardness  !  It  may  do  so  if  they  will  use  it  so.  Let  nobody 
complain  ;  a  time  must  come,  sooner  or  later,  in  every  one's  life,  when 
he  has  to  part  with  advantages,  connexions,  supports,  consolations,  that 
he  has  had  hitherto,  and  face  a  new  state  of  things.  Every  one  knows 
that  he  is  not  always  to  have  all  that  he  has  now  :  he  says  to  himself, 
"  What  shall  I  do  when  this  or  that  stay,  or  connexion,  is  gone  ?  "  and 
the  answer  is,  "  That  he  will  do  without  it."  .  .  .  The  time  comes  when 
this  is  taken  away ;  and  then  the  mind  is  left  alone,  and  is  thrown 
back  upon  itself,  as  the  expression  is.  But  no  religious  mind 
tolerates  the  notion  of  being  really  thrown  upon  itself;  this  is  only 
to  say  in  other  words,  that  it  is  thrown  back  upon  God.  .  .  .  Secret 
mental  consolations,  whether  of  innocent  self-flattery  or  reposing 
confidence,  are  over ;  a  more  real  and  graver  life  begins — a  firmer, 
harder  disinterestedness,  able  to  go  on  its  course  by  itself.  Let  them 
see  in  the  change  a  call  to  greater  earnestness,  sincerer  simplicity,  and 
more  solid  manliness.  What  were  weaknesses  before  will  be  sins  now.1 

"A  new  stage  has  begun.  Let  no  one  complain": 
—this,  the  expression  of  individual  feeling,  represents 
pretty  accurately  the  temper  into  which  the  Church 
party  settled  when  the  first  shock  was  over.  They 
knew  that  henceforward  they  had  difficult  times  before 
them.  They  knew  that  they  must  work  under  sus- 
picion, even  under  proscription.  They  knew  that  they 
must  expect  to  see  men  among  themselves  perplexed, 
unsettled,  swept  away  by  the  influences  which  had 
affected  Mr.  Newman,  and  still  more  by  the  precedent 
of  his  example.  They  knew  that  they  must  be  pre- 
pared to  lose  friends  and  fellow-helpers,  and  to  lose* 
them  sometimes  unexpectedly  and  suddenly,  as  the 
wont  was  so  often  at  this  time.  Above  all,  they  knew 
that  they  had  a  new  form  of  antagonism  to  reckon 
with,  harder  than  any  they  had  yet  encountered.  It 
had  the  peculiar  sad  bitterness  which  belongs  to  civil 
war,  when  men's  foes  are  they  of  their  own  households 

1  Christian  Remembrancer,  January  1846,  pp.  167,  168. 


350  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP. 

—the  bitterness  arising  out  of  interrupted  intimacy 
and  affection.  Neither  side  could  be  held  blameless  ; 
the  charge  from  the  one  of  betrayal  and  desertion  was 
answered  by  the  charge  from  the  other  of  insincerity 
and  faithlessness  to  conscience,  and  by  natural  but 
not  always  very  fair  attempts  to  proselytise ;  and  un- 
doubtedly, the  English  Church,  and  those  who  adhered 
to  it,  had,  for  some  years  after  1845,  to  near  from  the 
lips  of  old  friends  the  most  cruel  and  merciless  in- 
vectives which  knowledge  of  her  weak  points,  wit, 
argumentative  power,  eloquence,  and  the  triumphant 
exultation  at  once  of  deliverance  and  superiority  could 
frame.  It  was  such  writing  and  such  preaching  as  had 
certainly  never  been  seen  on  the  Roman  side  before, 
at  least  in  England.  Whether  it  was  adapted  to  its 
professed  purpose  may  perhaps  be  doubted  ;  but  the 
men  who  went  certainly  lost  none  of  their  vigour  as 
controversialists  or  their  culture  as  scholars.  Not  to 
speak  of  Mr.  Newman,  such  men  as  Mr.  Oakeley, 
Mr.  Ward,  Mr.  Faber,  and  Mr.  Dalgairns  more  than 
fulfilled  in  the  great  world  of  London  their  reputation 
at  Oxford.  This  was  all  in  prospect  before  the  eyes 
of  those  who  had  elected  to  cast  in  their  lot  with  the 
English  Church.  It  was  not  an  encouraging  position. 
The  old  enthusiastic  sanguineness  had  been  effectually 
quenched.  Their  Liberal  critics  and  their  Liberal 
friends  have  hardly  yet  ceased  to  remind  them  how 
sorry  a  figure  they  cut  in  the  eyes  of  men  of  the  world, 
and  in  the  eyes  of  men  of  bold  and  effective  thinking.1 


1  E.g.    the    Warden    of     Merlon's  and  the  University  soon    resumed   its 

History  of  the  University  of  Oxford,  \>.  wonted   tranquillity."     "  Lifeless  con- 

212.      "  The  first  panic  was  succeeded  formity"   sounds   odd   connected  with 

by  a  reaction  ;  some  devoted  adherents  Dr.  Pusey  or  Mr.  J.  B.  Mozley,  and  the 

followed  him  (Mr.  Newman)  to  Rome  ;  London  men  who  were  the  founders  of 

others  relapsed  into  lifeless  conformity  ;  the  so-called  Ritualist  schools. 


xix  THE  CATASTROPHE  351 

The  "poor  Puseyites  "  are  spoken  of  in  tones  half  of 
pity  and  half  of  sneer.  Their  part  seemed  played  out. 
There  seemed  nothing  more  to  make  them  of  import- 
ance. They  had  not  succeeded  in  Catholicising  the 
English  Church  ;  they  had  not  even  shaken  it  by  a 
wide  secession.  Henceforth  they  were  only  marked 
men.  All  that  could  be  said  for  them  was,  that  at  the 
worst,  they  did  not  lose  heart.  They  had  not  forgotten 
the  lessons  of  their  earlier  time. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  pursue  farther  the  course  of 
the  movement.  All  the  world  knows  that  it  was  not, 
in  fact,  killed  or  even  much  arrested  by  the  shock  of 
1845.  But  after  1845,  ^ts  ne^  was  at  least  as  much 
out  of  Oxford  as  in  it.  As  long  as  Mr.  Newman  re-, 
mained,  Oxford  was  necessarily  its  centre,  necessarily, 
even  after  he  had  seemed  to  withdraw  from  it.  When 
he  left  his  place  vacant,  the  direction  of  it  was  not  re- 
moved from  Oxford,  but  it  was  largely  shared  by  men 
in  London  and  the  country.  It  ceased  to  be  strongly 
and  prominently  Academical.  No  one  indeed  held 
such  a  position  as  Dr.  Pusey's  and  Mr.  Keble's  ;  but 
though  Dr.  Pusey  continued  to  be  a  great  power  at 
Oxford,  he  now  became  every  day  a  much  greater 
power  outside  of  it ;  while  Mr.  Keble  was  now  less 
than  ever  an  Academic,  and  became  more  and  more 
closely  connected  with  men  out  of  Oxford,  his  friends 
in  London  and  his  neighbours  at  Hursley  and  Win- 
chester. The  cause  which  Mr.  Newman  had  given  up 
in  despair  was  found  to  be  deeply  interesting  in  ever 
new  parts  of  the  country  :  and  it  passed  gradually  into 
the  hands  of  new  leaders  more  widely  acquainted  with 
English  society.  It  passed  into  the  hands  of  the 
Wilberforces,  and  Archdeacon  Manning ;  of  Mr. 
Bennett,  Mr.  Dodsworth,  Mr.  W.  Scott,  Dr.  Irons, 


352  THE  OXFORD  MOVEMENT  CHAP,  xix 

Mr.  E.  Hawkins,  and  Mr.  Upton  Richards  in  London. 
It  had  the  sympathy  and  counsels  of  men  of  weight,  or 
men  who  were  rising  into  eminence  and  importance 
—some  of  the  Judges,  Mr.  Gladstone,  Mr.  Roundell 
Palmer,  Mr.  Frederic  Rogers,  Mr.  Mountague  Bernard, 
Mr.  Hope  Scott  (as  he  afterwards  was),  Mr.  Badeley, 
and  a  brilliant  recruit  from  Cambridge,  Mr.  Beresford 
Hope.  It  attracted  the  sympathy  of  another  boast  of 
Cambridge,  the  great  Bishop  of  New  Zealand,  and  his 
friend  Mr.  Whytehead.  Those  times  were  the  link 
between  what  we  are  now,  so  changed  in  many  ways, 
and  the  original  impulse  given  at  Oxford ;  but  to 
those  times  I  am  as  much  of  an  outsider  as  most  of 
the  foremost  in  them  were  outsiders  to  Oxford  in  the 
earlier  days.  Those  times  are  almost  more  important 
than  the  history  of  the  movement ;  for,  besides  vin- 
dicating it,  they  carried  on  its  work  to  achievements 
and  successes  which,  even  in  the  most  sanguine  days 
of  "  Tractarianism,"  had  not  presented  themselves  to 
men's  minds,  much  less  to  their  hopes.  But  that  story 
must  be  told  by  others. 

"  Show  thy  servants  thy  work,  and  their  children 
thy  glory." 


INDEX 


ADDRESSES  to  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, by  clergy  and  laity,  95 
Anglicanism,  its  features  in  1830,  8 

Newman's  views    on,    185,    194, 

196,  233,  238 

Newman's  interpretation  of,  2OI 
Apologia,   quotations   from,    104,   114, 
"7,  156,  173,  177,  180,  235,  236,  244 
Apostolic  Succession,  29,  108 

Newman's  insistence  on,  29,  99, 

108 
its   foundation   on  Prayer   Book, 

101 

Apostolicity  of  English  Church,  199 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.      See  Ad- 
dresses, and  Howley 
Arians,  the,  115,  197 
Arnold,  Dr.,  theories  on  the  Church, 

5.  6,  45 
his  proposal  to  unite  all  sects  by 

law,  90 

attack  on  Tractarians,  131 
Professorship  at  Oxford,  273 
his  influence  shown  in  rise  of  third 

school,  338 

Articles,  the,  and  Dissenters,  127-138 
subscription  of.   See  Dr.  Hampden, 
and  Thirty-nine  Articles 

BAPTISM,  Tract  on,  119,  228 
Baptistery,  the,  273 
Bennett,  Mr.,  352 
Bentham.     See  Utilitarianism 
Bernard,  Mr.  Mountague,  352 
Bishoprics,  suppression  of  ten  Irish,  82 


Bishops'   attitude   to    movement,   201, 

217,  245 

the  first  Tract  on,  100 
Blachford,     Lord,     reminiscences     of 

Froude,  30,  50 
Bliss,  James,  115 
Blomfield,  Bishop,  217,  275 
British  Association,  a  sign  of  the  times, 

17 
British  Critic  on  the  movement,  171, 

197,  220,  221,  231,  235,  255,  289 

British  Magazine,  28,  84,  166 
Brougham,  Lord,  16 
Bunsen,  M. ,  and  the  Bishopric  of  Jeru- 
salem, 275 
Burton,  Dr.,  89,  137 

CAMBRIDGE,  critical  school  of  theology, 

14 

Capes,  Mr.,  341 
Cardwell,  Dr.,  284 
Catastrophe,  the,  333-352 
Catholicity   of   English    Church,    199, 

209,  239,  247,  304 
Catholicus's  letters  to  the  Times,  272 
Celibacy,  observations  on,  320 
Celibate  clergy  scheme,  47,  1 1 1 
Changes  in  movement,  190-211 
Christian  Remembrancer,  121,  348 
Christian  Year,  18,  22 
Christianity,  Church  of  England,  two 

schools  of,  8 
Christie,  Albany,  341 
Christie,  J.  F.,  115 
Church,  the,  in  eighteenth  century,  3 


2  A 


354 


INDEX 


Church,  Dr.  Whately's  theories  on,  4, 

5,  45»  129 

Dr.  Arnold's  theories,  5 
Coleridge's  theories,  129 
Apostolic    origin   of,  8,   29,    83, 

101,  199,  200 
various  conceptions  of,  44 
political  attacks  on,  83,  91 
public  mind  indifferent  to,  90 
Dr.  Pusey's  theories  on,  119 
theological  aspect  of,  166 
practical  aspect  of,  166 
and  the  Roman  question,  175*189 
Catholicity  of,  197,  199,  209,  239 
and  the  doctrine  of  Development, 

200,  341 

Church  of  the  Fathers,  166,  320 
"Churchman's  Manual,"  109 
Scotch  Bishops  on,  no 
Churton,  Mr.  (of  Crayke),  no 
Claughton,  Mr.  Piers,  277 
Clergy  of  eighteenth  century,  character 

of,  3 

Close,  Dr.  (of  Cheltenham),  259 
Coffin,  Mr.,  341 
Coleridge,  Mr.  Justice,  290 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  influence  on  Charles 

Marriott,  70 
Church  theories,  129 
Conservative  Journal,  Newman's  lan- 
guage towards  Rome,  202 
Copeland,  William  John,  57,  115,  127, 

293 

Cornish,  C.  L.,  66 
Creeds,  the,  pamphlets  on,  90 
authority  of,  142 

DALGAIRNS,  Mr.,  205,  206,  341 
Defeats,    the    Three,    271  -  291.      See 

also  Isaac  Williams,  Macmullen,  and 

Pusey 
Dickinson,     Dr.,     "Pastoral     Epistle 

from  his  Holiness  the  Pope,"  176 
Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge  Society, 

16 
Dissenters  and  the  Articles,    127-138. 

See  also  Thirty-nine  Articles 
Dodsworth,  Mr.,  352 
Dominic,     Father,    receives    Newman 

into  Church  of  Rome,  341 
Donkin,  Mr.,  330 


Doyle,  Sir  F.,  on  Newman's  sermons, 
124 

Ecclesiologist  founded,  348 

Eden,  C.  P.,  282 

Edinburgh  Review,  article  by  Dr. 
Arnold  on  Tractarians,  131,  149 

"  Elucidations  of  Dr.  Ham pd en's  Theo- 
logical Statements,"  146 

English  Chiirchman  founded,  348 

Evangelicism  in  1830,  character  of,  n, 
13 

FABER,  Francis,  277,  282,  341 

Faber,  Frederic,  205 

Fasting,  Tract  on,  131 

Faussett,  Dr.,  255,  258 

attack  on  Dr.  Pusey,  285 

Froude,  Richard  Hurrell,  23,  30-56 
pupil  of  Keble,  23,  36 
Fellow  of  Oriel,  25,  31 
first  meeting  with  Newman,  25 
early  estimate  of  Newman,  26 
travels  with  Newman,  28 
influence  on  the  movement,  31 
his  severe  self-discipline,  32-35 
character,  33 

Mozley's  remarks  on,  34,  43 
correspondence,  34,  42 
his  Remains  published,  37 
effect  of  publication,  37,  228 
a  modern  estimate  of  the  Remains, 

38 

events  of  1830,  43 
theory  of  the  Church,  45 
sermons  and  writings,  48 
Lord     Blachford's    reminiscences 
of,  50 

Froude,  William,  115 

GARBETT,    Mr.,    elected    Professor   of 

Poetry,  274,  276 
Gilbert,  Dr.,  150,  274 
Gladstone,  Mr.,  187,  289,  330,  352 
Golightly,  Mr.,  192,  277 
Gorham,  Mr.,  251 
Grammar   of  Assent    on    Faith    and 

Reason,  222 

Greenhill,  Dr.,  282,  330 
Guardian  founded,  348 
Guillemard,  Mr.,  331 


INDEX 


355 


HADDAN,  A.,  293 

Haclleigh,    Conference    of  leaders   at, 

28,  31,  84,  85 

policy  adopted,  88,  89,  93,  96 
Hampden,  Dr.,  70,  139-154 

advocates  abolition  of  subscription 

of  Articles,  133 

his  election  as  Professor  of  Divin- 
ity, 138 

outcry  against  election  of,  147,  148 
Bampton  Lectures,  141 
so-called  "  persecution  "  of,  147 
modern  estimate  of  the  "  persecu- 
tion," 151 
deprived     of     vote     for     Select 

Preachers,  149,  276 
his    action    in    the    B.D.  degree 

contest,  278 
Hare,  Julius,  14 
Hawkins,  Dr.,  283,  286 
Hawkins,  E.,  352 
Hill,  Mr.,  150 
Hobhouse,  Mr.,  282 
Holland  House,  16 
"  Home  Thoughts  Abroad,"  28 
Hook,  Dr.,  10,  184,  191,  254,  275 
Hope,  Mr.  Beresford,  352 
Howley,  Archbishop,  217,  275 
Hussey,  Mr.,  282 

Ideal   of    a    Christian  Church.       See 

W.  G.  Ward 

Infallibility,  views  on,  183,  239 
Irons,  Dr.,  352 

JEBB,  Bishop,  29 
Jelf,  Dr.,  286 
Jenkyns,  Dr.,  286 
Jerusalem,  Bishopric  of,  275 

Newman's  protest  against,  275 
Jolly,  Bishop,  no 
Jowett,  Mr.,  330 

KAYE,  Bishop,  10,  217 

Keble,  John,  18,  20-29,  293,  343 

brilliant  Oxford  career,  20 

suspicions  of  Evangelicism,  21 

a  strong  Tory,  21 

his  poetic  nature,  22 

influence  on  Froude,  23,  24,  27,  36 

his  pupils,  23 


Keble,    John,     sermon     on    National 

Apostasy,  82,  107 
tract     on     "  Mysticism     of     the 

Fathers,"  229 

resigns  Poetry  Professorship,  273 
Keble,  Thomas,  62 
Knox,  Alexander,  28,  128 

LAW'S  Serious  Call,  Keble's  remark 
on,  25 

Le  Bas,  Mr.,  10 

Lectures  on  Justification,  Newman's, 
influence  of,  229 

Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  New- 
man's, 240,  253 

Letters  of  an  Episcopalian,  5 

Lewis,  D.,  341 

Library  of  the  Fathers,  76,  120 

Lloyd's,  Bishop,  Lectures,  influence  of, 
41,  187 

Lowe,  R.,  255 

Lyall,  Mr.,  10 

Lyra  Apostolica,  28 

MACMULLEN,  Mr.,  271 

his  contest  on  B.  D.  degree,  279 
Manning,  Archdeacon,  352 
Marriott,  Charles,  30,  70-81,  343 

influenced  by  Coleridge  and  Dr. 
Hampden,  70 

aversion  to  party  action,  70 

Scholar  of  Balliol,  71 

Fellow  of  Oriel,  71 

Newman's  influence  on,  75 

Moberly's  influence  on,  75 

Principal   of    Chichester   Theolo- 
gical College,  76 

scheme  of  poor  students'  hall,  76 

Tutor  of  Oriel,  76 

Vicar  of  St.  Mary's,  76 

his  sermons,  76 

rooms  and  parties,  77 

share  in  Library  of  the  Fathers, 
76,  120 

Mozley's  estimate  of,  80 

death,  8 1 

Marsh,  Bishop,  217 
"Martyrs'  Memorial,"  connexion  with 

the  movement,  191,  192 
Maurice,  F.  D.,  views  of,  14,  135,  275 
Melbourne,  Lord,  138 


356 


INDEX 


Meyrick,  T.,  341 

Miller,  John  (of  Worcester),  Bampton 

Lectures,  influence  of,  10 
Moberly,  Dr.  (of  Winchester),  75,  293 
Monophysite  Controversy,  196,  197 
Morris,  John  Brande,  205,  341 
Mozley,  James,  34,  115,  278,  293,  348 

on  Newman's  sermons,  121 

on  "No.  90,"  249 
Mozley,  Thomas,  115,  322 

on  Charles  Marriott,  80 

on  Froude,  34,  43 

"  Mysticism  of  the  Fathers  in  the  use 
and  interpretation  of  Scripture," 
Keble's  Tract  on,  229 

NATIONAL  Apostasy,  Keble's  sermon  on, 

82,  107 
Newman,  John  Henry — 

his  early  preaching,  19 
meeting  with  Froude,  25 
Froude's  early  estimate  of,  26 
on  Apostolic  Succession,  q.v. 
on  Infallibility,  183,  239 
attitude     at     different     times    to 

Rome,  40,  48,   177,   179,   183, 

202,  241,  344 
early  friends,  57 
first  Tract,  written  by,  98 
his  four  o'clock  sermons,  113,  121, 

164,  1 68 

chief  coadjutors  of,  115 
views  on  subscription  of  Articles, 

137 

on  Dr.  Hampden's  theology,  146 

character,  164 

Lectures,  165 

Lectures  on  Justification,  229 

Anglicanism,  views  on,  185,  194, 

201 

resigns  St.  Mary's,  202 
not  a  proselytiser,  203 
Letter  to  Bishop  of  Oxford,  240, 

253 

interpretation   of  Church  formu- 
laries, 245 

on  the  Articles.     See  "No.  90" 
Essay    on    the    Development    of 

Christian  Doctrine,  200,  341 
joins  Church  of  Rome,  341 
Nicknames,  141,  160 


"  No.  90,"  232-256 

Newman's  attitude  on,  163 
object  to  defend  Catholicity  of  the 

Articles,  247 
its  reception,  252 
charge  of  dishonesty  against,  252 
condemned  by  Board  of  Heads,  253 
pamphlet  war  on,  254 
the  crisis  of  the  movement,  255, 

312 
events  after,  257-270 

OAKELEY,  Mr.,  321,  341 

article  on  "Jewel,"  322 
Ogilvie,  Dr.,  286 
Ordination,  validity  of,  102 
Origines  Liturgiccc,  88 
Oxford,  Liberal  School  of  Theology,  1 5 
Orthodoxy,  6l  • 
as  a  Church  School,  133 
Oxford  Movement — 

political  conditions  of,  I,  91 

beginnings  of,  20 

Keble  the  primary  author  of,  27 

early  writings  towards,  28 

the  leaders,  30 

forced  on  the  originators,  92 

object  of,  in 

accession  of  Dr.  Pusey  and  his 

influence,  115,  116,  117 
gradual  growth  of,  155-174 
attitude  to  Romanism,  175-189, 

194,  225 

changes  in,  190-211 
tendency  to  Romanism,  208,  232, 

261,  292 

in  origin  anti-Roman,  210 
attitude  of  University  authorities 
towards,  212,  215,  219,262-270, 
282,  327,  337 

attitude  of  Bishops  towards,  217 
mistakes  in  conduct  of,  219 
rise  of  third  school,  337 
secessions  to  Rome,  341 

PALMER,  William,  share  in  movement, 

30,  79,  84,  103,  254,  277,  322 
Origines  Liturgica,  88 
Narrative,  150 

Treatise  on  the  Church  of  Christ, 
1 86 


INDEX 


357 


Palmer,  Mr.  Roundell,  352 

Park,  Judge  Allan,  no 

Parochial  Sermons,  168 

Pattison,  Mark,  190 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  272 

Perceval,  A.,  share  in  movement,  84, 

90,  95,  109,  254 
Phillpotts,  Bishop,  217 
Plain  Sermons,  66 
Poetry  Professorship,  contest  for,  made 

a  theological  one,  273 
Prophetical  Office  of  the  Church,  226 
"  Prospects  of  the  Anglican  Church," 

235 

Newman's  after-thoughts  on,  236 
Pusey,  Dr.,  10,  30,  160,  271,  343 
joins  the  movement,  115 
effect  of  his  adhesion,  116,  117 
his  Remonstrance,  176 
tract  on  Baptism,  119,  228 
attack  on  him,  284 
sermon    on    the    Holy   Eucharist 

"delated"  to  Vice-Chancellor, 

285 
unfairness  of  proceedings  against, 

287 
memorial  to  Vice-Chancellor,  on 

his  case,  289 

"  RECORDS  of  the  Church,"  104 
Reform  days,  state  of  Church,  1-19 
Reformers,  early,  views  of,  192 
Remonstrance,  176 
' '  Reserve  in  communicating  Religious 

Knowledge,"  Isaac   Williams'   tract 

on,  230 

Richards,  Mr.  Upton,  352 
Rogers,  Frederic,  115,  332,  352 
Romanism  and  Popular  Protestantism, 

177-182 

Romanism,  175-189,  194,  225 
misconceptions  of,  178,  179 
Newman's  attitude   towards,  40, 
48,     177,     179,     l8l,     185,    202, 

241,  344 
tendency   in   party   of  movement 

towards,  208,  232,  261,  292 
Rose,  Hugh  James,  10,  28,  30,  84,  92 
an  estimate  of,  85 
lectures  on  German  speculation,  86 
controversy  with  Dr.  Pusey,  86 


Rose,  Hugh  James,  early  death,  87 
Routh,  Dr.,  10,  no,  264 
Rusticus,  pamphlets  by,  135 
Ryder,  G.,  341 

ST.  JOHN,  Mr.  Ambrose,  341 
Scott,  Mr.  Hope,  352 
Scott,  W.,  352 
Seager,  Charles,  205 
Selwyn,  Bishop,  273,  352 
Sewell,  William,  130,  277,  282 
Shairp,  Principal,    on  Newman's    ser- 
mons, 123 

Sikes,  Mr.  (of  Guilsborough),  no,  127 
Simpson,  Mr.,  341 
Stanley,  Mr.  Arthur,  207,  282,  295,  330, 

339 

Sterling,  John,  14 

Subscription.     See  Thirty-nine  Articles 
Sumner,  J.  Bird,  Bishop,  217,  219 
Symons,  Dr.,  150,  258,  283,  286 

opposition  to,  as  Vice-Chancellor, 
325 

TAIT,  Mr.  (of  Balliol),  252,  277,  282 

Theologians  of  1830,  9,  10 

Third  party  in  Church — 
rise  of,  337 
influence,  348  et  seq. 

Thirl  wall,  Connop,  14 

Thirty -nine    Articles,  subscription    of, 

127-138 

Dr.  Hampden  and  subscription,  1 33 
pamphlet  war  on  subscription,  135 
Newman  on  subscription,  137 
their  Catholicity,  247,  302.     And 

see  W.  G.  Ward 
"No.  90"  on,  247 

Thomas,  Vaughan,  150 

Times,  letters  of  Catholicus  to,  272 

Tottenham,  E.,  128 

Tractarian  doctrines,  discussion  of,  159 
Movement.     See  Oxford 

Tractarians,  excitement  against,  131 

Tract,  text  of  the  first,  99 

Tracts,  the— 

topics  of,  104 
mode  of  circulating,  104 
reception  of,  105,  106,  175 
accused  of  Romanism,  106 
first  volume  of,  107 


358 


INDEX 


Tracts,  the— 

later  numbers,  character  of,  119 

public  opinion  against,  1 30 

"  No.  90,"  q.v. 

contributors  to,  113 

on  "  Reserve,"  q.v. 

on  "Mysticism,"  q.v. 
Treatise  on  the  Church  of  Christ,  1 86, 
187 

UTILITARIANISM,  influence  on  religious 
belief,  15,  1 6 

Via  Media,  184,  246 

WALL,  Mr.,  282 

Ward,  W.  G.,  205,  255,  292-311,  341 
dismissed   from    Balliol    Lecture- 
ship, 271,  299 
writings  on  Romanism,  296 
his  criticisms  of  English  Church, 

308 
Ideal  of  a  Christian  Church,  300, 

312-332 

on  "No.  90,"  301 
on  the  Articles,  302 
hostility  to  Lutheranism,  307 
his  philosophy  of  religion,  317 
his  book  condemned,  319,  331 
himself  "degraded,"  331 
joins  Church  of  Rome,  341 


Watson,  Joshua,  61,  no 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  112 
Whately,  Dr. — 

theories  on  Church,  4,  5,  45,  129 

opposed  to  Tractarians,  132 

Letters  of  an  Episcopalian,  5 
White,  Blanco,  15,  129,  273,  348 
Whytehead,  Mr.,  352 
Wilberforce,  Henry,  115,  352 
Wilberforce,  Robert,  23,  31, 59, 115,  352 
Williams,   Isaac,   23,   30,   57-69,    115, 
271,  293,  343 

Keble's  influence  on,  59 

Fellow  of  Trinity,  62 

connexion  with  Newman,  63 

divergences  from  Newman,  64, 67, 
68 

contributions  to  Plain  Sermons,  66 

aversion  to  Rome,  67 

his  poetry,  68 

defeated  for  Poetry  Professorship, 
273,  276 

Tract  on  "  Reserve,"  67,  230 
Wilson,  H.  B.,  251,  252,  254 
Wilson,  R.  F.,  115 
Wiseman,  Dr.,  185 

article  on  Donatists,  197 
Wood,J.  F.,  115 
Woodgate,  Mr.,  293 
Wordsworth,  Dr.,  no 
Wynter,  Dr.,  258,  284 


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